


The Assassin's Redemption

by DisaLanglois



Series: Love and Rockets [3]
Category: Strike Back
Genre: Action/Adventure, Africa, Africa doesn't get enough love in fandom, British Military, Closeted Character, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Military, Original Character(s), Slash, Slow Build, South Africa, Weapons of Mass Destruction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-24
Updated: 2013-09-24
Packaged: 2017-12-23 17:23:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 42,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/929132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DisaLanglois/pseuds/DisaLanglois
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scott and Stonebridge are wildly outnumbered, and the rest of Section Twenty has travelled to reinforce them.  At last, they seem to have gained some concrete intelligence … but it has come at a very high price for Scott and Stonebridge. They have to find the missiles without losing themselves in the process, and sacrifices will have to be made.</p><p>Plot, action, bromance, and a bit of slash.  Complete, at last!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

## WEDNESDAY MORNING

## NAAMLOSEPUT, NORTHERN CAPE

“Wake up.”

Scott felt his shoulder being shaken vigorously, jerking him out of confused dreams of running.  His eyes snapped open, into Richmond’s face.  He wasn’t running headlong through a tunnel; he was sitting scrunched up in a chair in the Crib.

“Time to go,” Richmond said, and moved on to wake Michael. 

Scott sat up in the chair.  He’d had a few hours of sleep; not much, but enough. 

On the other side of the Crib, Baxter was already opening his locker and taking out his armour.   The light was dim, not quite strong enough to reach to the corners.  The windows were still black.

Michael was rolling up to his feet from his mattress.  He stood up, and rolled his shoulders back in that macho Tarzan of the Apes habit of his, showing off his chest.  He flexed his SCM muscles like a racehorse, left, right, left; and then bent down to pick up his sweater. 

Scott decided to stop staring, and dragged himself to his feet. 

Maggie had slept on the other inflatable mattress. She let out a little groan, and pushed herself upright.  Her face was grumpy with sleepiness.  “What time is it?”  she asked. 

Scott checked his watch.  “Oh-two-hundred.” 

“What’s that in _human_ time?” she grumbled. 

“It’s two o’clock in the morning.”  Scott moved over to his locker, and opened it.  He started taking out his toys, aware of Michael doing the same at the locker next to his.  They were shoulder to shoulder, but Michael had nothing to say.

“… _Conversation got boring_ ,” Baxter hummed to himself.  “ _You said you’d go into bed soon_ …” 

Getting ready was quick, when you kept yourself at a high pitch of almost-readiness at all times.  Scott kitted himself up, double-laced his boots, strapped on his body armour.  It would be cold out there.  He pulled a sweatshirt on over his armour, and began slotting his kit into his constellation of cargo pockets.  Alongside him, the others were doing the same. 

Richmond’s hair was done up in a tight French plait.  She was checking the mechanism of the Dragunov sniper rifle, her lips tight and her brow knitted with concentration.   She was clearly coming with them; injured shoulder or not.

He wasn’t going to say anything about that.  She wasn’t the first injured soldier to refuse to be left behind when the rest of her unit went into combat. 

 _Cah-click, cah-click, cah-click_ …

Scott turned around to see Maggie aiming her long lens at himself and Michael.  “You’re not taking pictures of this,” Scott said. 

“Oh, hell yeah, I am.”

Michael counted the bullets in his spare magazines, ignoring them as if Scott wasn't there.  He began putting his magazines into his cargo-pants pockets, and Maggie took another picture of him.  Mikey ignored the camera flash too. 

“Maggie, I said no," Scott insisted, trying to sound calm-assertive-dominant-Cesar-Millan.  "This is a mission!”

“I am so taking pictures of this, Damien!"   Maggie took a picture of his expression.  "Special Forces take out missile base?  This thing is just made for Time magazine!  This can get onto the cover!  Shit, this can get into the World Press Photo competition!”

“I said no!”

The sound of the camera shutter had attracted Sinclair’s attention as well.  He came around the corner of the main screen, and folded his arms.  "Of course, you’ll run those pictures by us, before you print them,” he said.  “Nothing that can tie us to Conrad Knox can go into the public domain.”

“Uh, _no_ ,” Maggie said. 

“Do you know how much trouble it would cause?” Scott asked, “if Time magazine ran a story on MI20 running covert ops inside a neutral country?”

“So?”  Maggie said.   “Who says you've got to be MI20?”

“What are you suggesting?” Michael asked, banging his locker door shut and turning to face her.    

“Come on,” she encouraged.  “Whose Special Forces do you most want to cause trouble for, right now?  I can pin any name onto you guys I want.  I told you, I protect my sources.”

Sinclair looked at Michael. Michael looked at Sinclair.   

Scott saw the idea dawn in both faces simultaneously.  Michael’s eyes flared, and he bared his teeth.  They both looked back at Maggie. 

“The French,” they said, in unison. 

“The DGSE,” Sinclair added, just in case she wasn’t sure _which_ French.   

“Great!” Maggie said.  “You can be Major Pierre.  He can be Sergeant Jean … Major Dalton can be Madame de Stael…”

Scott conceded defeat.  Maggie went on taking pictures.  Sinclair watched her with the comfortable enthusiasm of the professional people-wrangler. 

The Bravo team went on preparing.  For Scott, every movement he made was familiar.  He’d gone on scores of missions for Section Twenty; probably thousands for Delta Force before that.   

But for Maggie, this was all a new experience.  She’d seen missions, sure, but never anything close to Section Twenty’s league. 

Her eyes and her lens were everywhere, picking up odd moments that Scott himself was so accustomed to seeing he’d stopped seeing them.  She watched them do their com check with close fascination, “One, two.  One, two.  Lima Charlie…” She watched them strip and check and reassemble every weapon, from the Beretta 92 Scott had taken from Dieter Hendricks, to Mikey’s M4A1.  

She watched the final mission briefing as well, but this time she wasn’t the only one paying close attention. 

They met around the light-table, armed and fed and ready to go.  There was a snap, and a buzz, as Dalton turned on the light-table.  She laid out an image of the satellite surveillance. 

“Overnight monitoring shows seven heat signatures in and around _this_ building,” Sinclair tapped at a spot on the table: the largest rooftop, smack in the middle of the plot. 

“Only seven?” Scott questioned.  “Kinda small for Camp B.”

“They wouldn’t need more than a handful to guard the place,” Sinclair said.

“There were only twenty at Coldfalls Ridge,” Baxter said, “and _that_ was a whole facility, with a Google Maps address and a listed phone number.”

“Occasional trips outside to _here_ , probably a latrine," Sinclair continued.  "Their routes indicate two separate entrances to the building, _here_ and _here_.”

“Where are they now?” Dalton asked. 

Sinclair tapped the largest rooftop again.  “Heat signatures, all in the south-west corner of the building.  All asleep; no sentries.”

“We go in two teams, one forward, one back,” Dalton said, leaning over the light-table and pointing out where she wanted her troop dispositions.  She pointed at Richmond, Baxter and herself, “Alpha Team,” and then at Scott and Stonebridge.  “Charlie Team.” 

“Request reassignment to Alpha Team,” Michael said, without missing a beat.

Dalton looked surprised.  “I thought you were always together with Scott, in everything.” 

Scott was aware of odd looks being sent in his direction all around the table. He avoided their eyes, and scrunched up his mouth wryly.

“I’m not together with Scott in _anything_ , any more,” Michael said.  He set his hands in the small of his back and levelled out his shoulders.  “Ma’am.  Request reassignment?”

Scott scrunched up his mouth in the other direction and sighed.  He tipped one shoulder up, conceding the oddity of Michael's request, but didn’t say anything.  

“Very well,” Dalton agreed.  “Charlie Team, Baxter and Scott?”

“Fine by me,” Baxter agreed. 

Scott nodded.  “Good with that.”  Baxter wasn’t Mikey, but then again, nobody was.  And Richmond and Michael had worked together for years, before Scott had even heard of Section Twenty.  It would be fine; odd, but fine.

Dalton bent down over the table again.  “Alpha Team, ingress up the front road, circle around, enter through the front.  Charlie Team, ingress cross-country from _here_ , approach from the back, enter from the back door.  Simultaneous entry.  Control that building as fast as possible.  Alpha Team, move to hold prisoners in place.  Charlie Team, locate the missiles, destroy them.” 

She spoke quickly, tapping her fingertip over the satellite image.  She didn’t need to go through every step, one after another.  They’d all spent time last night looking at this picture and making plans.  They had all contributed to the plan. They all knew their jobs. 

But last night, it had all just been pre-op conjecture; insubstantial.  Now they were _here_ , and this _was_ the final plan.  The intel picture hadn’t changed overnight.  This was _it_ … and for some reason Scott felt a wobble in his belly. 

He dived into his own thoughts, trying to grab a firm hold on a vague doubt that had flickered down in his back-brain, but the idea had already slithered away, as hard to pin down as déjà vu. 

“Over watch?” Baxter asked. 

“We’ve got good satellite coverage, all morning,” Sinclair said.

“Richmond will go in with Alpha Team, but not all the way.  I want _you_ as reserve,” Dalton said to Richmond.  “Keep sniper watch on the buildings from _these_ trees.”

Richmond nodded, sombrely, although she knew already what her job was going to be.  Scott had seen her checking her Dragunov, her favourite sniper rifle.

“Charlie Team, lay the explosives, set the charges, exfil.  Five minutes to get out of there before the roof comes off.  Withdraw up the main road to exfil.” 

If the nukes themselves were in there, fifteen kilos of uranium, they were going to let off one _hell_ of a dirty bomb, but at least out here in the middle of nowhere it didn’t matter.  The Apartheid government had chosen the middle of the desert for their nuclear tests for a reason.  You could bury a whole heap of bodies out there… Scott’s back-brain wobbled again. 

“Transport?” 

“The Pajero.  Emergency rendezvous points, number one _here_ , number two _here_.”

“Prisoners?”

“First priority is getting those missiles.  Secondary objective is to bring back Pavel Arnisimov, if he’s there.  But not at the risk of the mission.”

The feeling of doubt in Scott’s belly solidified at the sound of Arnisimov’s name.  “This doesn't smell right,” he announced. 

He saw the jolt through the group.  His flat tone of voice startled them. 

“This is a solid lead,” Sinclair said.

“It’s _too_ solid."   

“Are you feeling _nervous_ , Scott?” Dalton asked, scathingly. 

“This doesn't smell right,” he said, again.  He waved a hand at the table.  “What are they doing in there?  Waiting for us to deliver ‘em a pizza?” 

“They’re asleep,” Sinclair said.  “It’s two a.m.” 

“Yeah,” he said, feeling out his own thoughts even as he spoke aloud.  “Why?  Arnisimov just _happens_ to turn his phone on and off again last night?”

“He’s collaborating with Ava Knox.”  Dalton said. 

“This sucks,” he said.  “He knows we’re here.  He knows we tracked that phone number.  Why’re they all just sitting there?” 

“You’re making the mistake of assuming the other side knows _how_ we got where we are,” Dalton said.  “For all he knows, we tracked the trucks’ number plates here.” 

“ _He_ knows,” Scott said.  “He _knows_ , and _this_ stinks.  It’s too fuckin’ tidy.”

“Sometimes, the intel just drops into your lap, and he who hesitates is lost,” Sinclair said.  “We can’t afford to be timid in capitalising on Arnisimov’s mistake.”

“I’m with Scott on this,” Michael spoke up. 

“You _are?_ ” Scott was surprised. 

“ _Both_ of you are having cold feet now?”  Dalton said, scathingly.  “I never thought I’d see the day.”

“I thought you weren’t with me on _anything_ any more,” Scott said, surprised. 

Michael narrowed his ice-chip eyes at him.  “I’m _not_ ,” he said, and then stiffened his spine, raising himself to his almost-not-quite-brace.  “But Scott’s instincts are good.” 

“Huh,” Scott said, flattered, but also a little shaken.

“Scott smells trouble before it happens," Michael said.  "If he says something smells wrong, something is wrong.” 

“We are _not_ running this mission according to Scott’s sense of smell!”  Dalton insisted.  “We have the phone call, we have the containers, we have proximity to Vastrap.  Pavel Arnisimov _is_ in that building.”  

“No one doubts that,” Scott said.  “But it still doesn't smell right.”

“We could call in an air strike,” Michael suggested. 

“Call in an air strike?” Sinclair replied, “In a neutral country, in the middle of the night, on the basis of a single phone call and after about five hours of surveillance…?”  He didn’t need to finish.

“Fine,” Dalton said.  She straightened to her full height, and folded her arms.  “If you two are dead set, you’re out.  Baxter, Richmond, we’re Alpha Team –.”

“No!” said Michael.

“ _Fuck_ no,” Scott added.  “We’re coming.”

 The feeling of going headfirst into a set-up was bad; the feeling of staying behind while his buddies went into the set-up without him was _unbearable._   He’d sat in a cell when Curtis and the rest of his Delta team went into Iraq without him; the fact that they’d all written him off as a scumbag drug smuggler was irrelevant to the way he’d _felt_.  If he couldn’t stop Section Twenty from going, he was going with them. 

“We’re just going to have to _real_ careful.”  He exchanged glances with Michael, and for the first time since their showdown in the reservoir, Michael met his eye, and nodded. 

“Then I don’t want to hear any more complaints,” Dalton said.  “If you’re going, you’re going under my command.  Is that clear?” 

“Roger that,” Michael agreed, reluctantly.

 

* * *

 

Scott’s night-vision goggles recognised the patches ahead of him on the horizon.  Solid structures in the dark; obstructions on the blank sweep of the desert.  Broken lines, and straight ones: trees, and rooftops. 

He held up his fist in a Stop signal, and dropped to his haunches, knowing without looking that Baxter was matching him. 

“Zero, this is Charlie Team,” he said, into his mike.  “We have visual on the target.” 

“ _Roger that, Charlie Team,”_ Sinclair said, from the Crib. _“Stand by.”_

_“Wilco, Charlie.”_

_“Zero, Alpha Team, we copy Charlie Team._ ”  Dalton’s voice was tinny and high in his ear. 

On the other side of the target, Dalton would be coming up the road, keeping to the trees, with Mikey and Julia Richmond close on her heels.  Getting Charlie Team cross-country had meant arranging their timing so that both teams arrived at the door at the same moment, which had meant dropping off Scott and Baxter early for a hike across from the nearest road. 

Scott could feel his sweat trickling down his spine, under T-shirt, body armour and sweater. 

“ _Five o’clock_ _in the morning…_ ,” Baxter murmured under his breath, “ _Conversation got boring…_ _You said you’d go into bed soon_ … Fuck!” he grunted, and stopped himself. 

Scott laughed silently in the dark, safe in the knowledge that his expression was invisible.  The night-vision gear hung like mandibles over his face, hiding his face.  He’d been told, in Delta, that night vision goggles were green because the eye could differentiate between different shades of green more finely than any other colour, but as always, the images looked to him as if he was walking inside a fish tank. 

“ _Zero, Alpha Team ETA twenty seconds.  We are Go in twenty seconds_.” 

“Zero, Charlie Team,” Scott replied, “copy that.  Go in twenty.” 

Behind him, Baxter began to count down.  “Four… three… two…” 

Scott launched himself into a low trot on _One_ , his M4 held in front of him.  The night-vision goggles danced up and down with his stride, and his breath was hissing.  He could hear crickets, and the fabric sounds of his trouser legs passing through dry brush.  He could hear Baxter behind him.  Baxter's boots clapped lightly on the earth; the Leopard, running quiet as ever. 

Other than the bubble of sound surrounding his passage, the night was silent.  The green glow of the farmstead ahead grew in his view.  The sky was a flat green panel above him, hanging low overhead like a cinema screen.

“ _Bravo Three, I’m taking up over watch_.”  He could see Richmond in his mind’s eye, peeling off to the right and lying up with her Dragunov from a place where she had a good view of the open yard in front of the big building. 

Sixty yards, fifty yards; and Scott could not help ticking off the distances in Imperial, at least in his own head.  He spoke to his buddies in metres, but he still saw in yards.  But _now_ was not the time to get distracted by thoughts of immigration.

Forty yards, thirty yards, and they were under the first of the trees now, crunching through thicker brush. 

Twenty yards, and they were getting closer to the first outhouse.  Fifteen yards, feet clapping the ground, and the outhouse was dark.  He ran down the side, and came to a stop at the forward corner, facing the yard. 

Nothing moved out there, in the green glowing.  He knew Baxter was above him, his weapon’s barrel covering their flank.  He rose to his feet, and hooked around the front of the outbuilding.  It was empty. “Bravo One, all clear.” 

 _So far_ , his mind sang, _so far…_

In his ear, Michael’s voice said “ _Bravo Two, all clear, moving forward._ ” 

“ _Bravo Three, I have your six_ ,” Richmond said.  Her voice was hushed, even over the radio; as if even speech would leak some of the sniper’s lethal power. 

Scott ran forward, as Baxter hooked around into the open doorway of the out-building.  “Clear,” Baxter hissed, and followed Scott to the biggest building. 

This was their target.  He took a halt, scanning the wall ahead of him. 

They’d come up to the building at the wrong angle, Scott realized; instead of heading directly for the north-east corner they’d arrived halfway down the east wall of the… what the fuck _was_ this thing?  Barn?  Chicken battery?  Sheep-shearing shed?  He couldn’t smell any sheep. 

He could smell diesel, though; strong, as if a generator had been running recently.  

The way to go was to his right.  To his right, around the north-east corner, and to the back door of the barn.  Around that corner was where he was supposed to go.  They were supposed to break in through the back of the barn, while Alpha came up the drive, between the shipping containers arranged around the open yard, and broke in through the front.  He was _supposed_ to go to his right. 

 _Supposed_ to go…

The unease leaped into his belly.  He could hear nothing above his own breathing, and the night sucked at him.  Not a sound, not even crickets.  The night was completely still, not even the sound of wind breathing through the treetops. 

Baxter was behind him, his shoulder touching Scott’s, his barrel watching their back-trail, but Scott was alone. 

 _This doesn't smell right_ …

Michael would have known what he was thinking.  Michael’s barrel went where Scott looked as if they were glued together like an Apache pilot and his gun.  Michael would have known what he was thinking, but Michael was on the other side of the building.  Michael was coming up the open throat of the yard between the shipping containers…

Fuck it.  Rules were meant to be broken.  “You go right, I go left,” Scott hissed.  “Get to that door.” 

He didn’t wait for any disagreement, just lifted off his haunches and took off to the left.  Baxter could follow, or he could obey the original plan. 

He knew in a second that he was running alone, that Baxter was not following him.   _Good kid,_ he thought.

“Zero,” he whispered, so that Alpha Team didn’t shoot him in the dark.  “Bravo One, making a recce down the east wall, approaching your one o'clock.”

He jogged down the wall, taking little balletic steps so as to keep his foresight from bobbing up and down.  He trotted down the whole long side of the barn, in the dark.  The silence sucked at him.  It sang at him, but the green glow of the night-vision goggles showed nothing around him.

Nothing with his _eyes,_ but his gut was churning.  _This stinks, this stinks, I’m not buying it, it’s too neat_ …

He peeled away from the front of the building, making space between himself and the corner.  He needed space so that he had a clear view of the yard, back from the wall.  He crouched against a tree, and braced himself there for a moment.  The foresight of his M4 tracked back and forth across the yard. 

Nothing.  The yard was a green sea, the trees like a reef all around, and the sky was a white wall in the coming dawn.  The sun was coming up soon.  Nothing was moving.  Was he just being paranoid?  Latent PTSD making him jump at shadows?  Had he broken the movement order for no reason?  Had he just made a fool of himself for nothing?

The nearest shipping container was just a few yards away.  It stood with its doors facing the yard.  The doors were ajar.  The nearer of the doors was open, hiding the gap between them from his line of sight.  On the other side of the yard was another container, oriented the same way, and its doors also faced in toward the yard. 

The two containers on the other side were facing inward as well, and their doors were ajar too.  The containers faced each other across the yard.  Their doors were open, too, ajar only a matter of inches, only wide enough for a man to put an eye to the gap and watch. 

 _All_ of their doors were slightly ajar.

As he watched, movement took his attention on the other side of the yard.  A human figure came out into the glow of the night-vision goggles, and he recognised Michael’s spread-legged stride. 

The nearest door moved, very slightly, and he knew what he was looking at. 

 **“ _IT'S A TRAP!_ ”** he bellowed.  “ ** _GET OUT, IT'S A TRAP!_ ”** 

He threw up the M4 and laid down a covering burst through the forward end of the nearest shipping container. 

 

* * *

 

“Fuck!”  Sinclair stared at the main screen as automatic weapons fire opened up.  The sound of it racketed through the speakers, the muzzle blasts flickering in the dark on the screen.  “They must have been hiding their heat signatures all day!”

“What’s happening?” Maggie said, panicked.

“It’s an ambush!”  Sinclair said. “We’ve got HMGs in those shipping containers!”  He bent over Primary One, ready to steer his team out of the trap.  “Bravo Four, come forward! Alpha Team needs covering fire!  Bravo Three, open fire, repeat _open fire!_ Fall back on ERV One!” 

 

* * *

 

Stonebridge heard Scott roar in his ear, and then the quiet approach was over. 

The nearest doors flew open.  Stonebridge saw the hint of horizontal glints from the barrels of whatever was inside.  He dropped to one knee, and the M4 came up.

“Fucking hell!” 

Floodlights flashed on, aimed down into the centre of the yard.  For a second he was blind, until the goggles re-adjusted, and then he was deafened by the first roar of gunfire.  His M4 roared.

The trap closed, but Scott’s warning had been enough.  They weren’t in the killing field.  The trap closed too soon, and they were alive. 

He opened up a hailstorm burst at the mouth of the nearest container, the M4 beating at his shoulder, and he roared at the men in the machine gun nest.  He saw them dodge back inside, and emptied his magazine at them in a rage.  How _dare_ they try to trap them!   

“Back!  Move!” Dalton screamed at him.  Stonebridge dropped his barrel and zigzagged back to her, so as not to obstruct her fire. He leapfrogged her, and dropped to his knee. 

“I’m out! Changing!”  He pulled out a spare mag and rammed it in.  “Get back!” he roared.  “Move, move, move!” 

He saw her drop her barrel and whip around and sprint toward him.  There was movement beyond the containers, in the trees.  Alpha Team weren’t in the kill zone; so the enemy was trying to re-jig the ambush into a pursuit.  _Not happening_ , he thought, angrily, and he aimed the M4 that way and fired a few bursts on full auto.    _One, two_.  The M4 rattled against his shoulder.  Something fell.  Someone shrieked in pain.   Dalton went past him in a sprint.

“Fall back!” she screamed.  "Move!" 

He sprang back to his feet and sprinted back to the tree.  She was there, shoulder against the trunk, her M4 aimed.  She’d ripped her night-vision goggles off, and in the flood-lights he could see her bared teeth and the muscles of her jaw juddering with the heavy recoil of her bursts.

The gun team furthest from him were turning its barrel toward him.  They were lifting the HMG, trying to change their trajectory.  They would try to hose Alpha Team down, without flaying their friends on the other side of the yard.  He aimed his M4 at them, and then two of them were tumbling down in the limp way of the suddenly-dead.  The rest were ducking back inside, cringing from the sniper.  Julia Richmond, covering them with her Dragunov. 

“Fall back!” Dalton screamed again, backing up behind her M4 like a boxer.  “Move! Move!”

He took off after her.  “Where are you, Scott?” he roared, although Scott would hear him no better for shouting.  He ran beyond Dalton, spun around and crabbed back behind his M4.  He saw no sign of Scott.  “Come on, come on!" he yelled at Scott.  "Let’s get out of here!” 

“Fall back!”  Dalton ordered.

“Need to lay down covering fire for Scott!” he insisted. 

“He’s on the other side, with Baxter!” 

“He’s on this side! I saw him!” 

He turned and aimed the M4 back at the containers. 

 

* * *

 

Scott aimed his M4 straight up at the nearest light.  _If they set up lights, it means they need ‘em, so kill ‘em._ Shards of glass exploded, and darkness fell.  Dark was cover, and he used it to fall back.  He backed up all the way to the edge of the building, and took up position at the corner.  He raised the M4, and fired a few short bursts into the yard to keep the assholes’ heads down.  He couldn’t see Alpha Team on the other side any more, but there was still firing from over there.  Mikey, giving the assholes the good news. 

 _Not that there’s much good news to give_ … Scott's only chance was to meet up with Baxter, and get out of this clusterfuck the way they had come in.  To go forward to get to Michael through that shit-storm would be suicide.  Fuck that.  He didn’t feel like suicide today.

“Not today, Sylvio!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.  He gave the containers a final burst, and fell back around the corner behind his M4. 

“Bravo Four!” he yelled.  “Coming to ya!”

“ _Standing by,”_ Baxter yelled back. 

“ _Bravo One, fall back, fall back_ ,” Sinclair said, in his ear.  “ _Enemy inside the building is moving to your position!_ ” 

“ _Shit!_ ” Baxter yelled.  “ _Holy cow!_ ” Scott heard the battering of his M4 ahead of him.  “ _I’m being overrun!_ ” 

“On me!” Scott yelled.  "C'mere, Liam, c'mere!"  He came to a stop and waited.  He could hear a thunderous fire fight out of sight behind him; HMGs beating up on Alpha Team with everything they had.  He could also hear the shriller hammering of M4's under the bawling of the HMGs, whaling back. 

“ _Coming to you!_ ”

Scott saw Baxter forming up in the green halo of the night vision.  A second later Baxter arrived against the wall with a thudding impact.  He turned around and fired off a burst away from the building.

“Where the _hell_ did _they_ all come from?” Baxter demanded, changing magazines.  He sounded aggrieved. 

“What’s the matter, don’t you _like_ surprises?”  Scott grinned at him, the adrenalin pumping.  “On me!” 

The job had changed.   _No combat plan ever survives combat, Mister Scott: the enemy always gets a vote._   Section Twenty was hugely outnumbered.  They’d lived because of Scott’s warning, and because the containers could not change their trajectories without hitting each other, and because the bad guys, by the look of things, didn’t have night-vision.  The plan _now_ was extracting themselves, no more.  Victory conditions meant _not dying._   They were going to have to get back to ERV 1, and get the hell out of Dodge. 

“ _Bravo One, path through the back is blocked. I say again, no way to go back_.”

“No shit, Sinclair, give me something useful!” 

They could not stay against the wall for more than a few seconds.  Scott took off, striking off toward the trees.  Head low, and jinking, so drawing a bead on him was harder.  He ran for a parked truck, dived around it and hunkered down next to the front wheel.  He paused for a second to let Baxter catch up, and then bolted for the nearest tree. 

And now he had a clear view of the containers. 

The nearest one, the one he’d already fired into, had its back squarely toward him.  He was in the blind spot of the HMGs.  All the HMGs.

 _Fucktastic!_   He opened fire, riddling the second nearest one, chomping up the forward section of the container, in the hope of hitting some of the gun’s crew.  Alongside him, Baxter did the same. 

The HMGs had been set up so as not to fire at each other.  But that also meant the fuckers could not fire _at_ each other.  Fuck ‘em: they’d _pay_ for that crappy disposition!  “With me!” he yelled at Baxter.  He sprang to his feet and dashed back for the nearest container.

The container grew in his night vision, and he button-hooked around the corner so suddenly that the barrel did not have time to traverse in his direction.  Wide eyes looked up at him. Seven hundred rounds per minute at point blank range later, he had an empty gun and four corpses in a shipping container. 

“Fuck you!” he yelled at them.  The container stank of blood spatter and smoke. 

Baxter was behind him.  “We can get this thing going!”  He stepped in and gave the machine gun a greedy look. 

“No! We’ll be outflanked!  Go!  Go!”  He banged on Baxter’s shoulder, and the other man left the mouth of the container.  Scott pulled a grenade out of his left leg cargo pocket, pulled its pin and dropped it onto the gun's belt. Then he belted out after Baxter. 

The open yard between the containers was still a killing field.  They’d dealt with one HMG but there were three more, and the goal was getting _out_.  They’d have to smash a hole in the trap, and get out through it.  They’d have to get out of the cordon around the killing field, and go around it to make it to ERV One. 

Baxter had gone right-side around the container, and Scott followed.  He heard and felt the solid _whump_ of the grenade going off in the confined space of the container.  The pressure wave knocked at him, but the container had funnelled most of the shock toward the centre of the yard.  “Merry fuckin’ Christmas!”  He put his head around, and ran, expecting to feel a heavy calibre bullet chopping at his spine every stride, but none came.  He ran past the corner, toward the trees. 

The brilliance of the floodlights faded.  The shadows were deeper. 

Had they broken through?  _Was that it?_   He had just enough time to feel hope, and then the night was lit up all over again by tracer fire.  He threw himself down onto his belly, just in time, and the bullets zipped and whipped over him. 

Another ambush; this time set there to stop them getting out the way they’d come in.  Scott screamed, “Fuck you!”  He rolled on the ground, giving them return fire with his weapon.  One of them collapsed, and the others ducked for the cover of the trees. 

Baxter rolled to his feet.  “Going forward!” he yelled.  He launched into a sprint.

“Go!”  He lay on the ground, and kept their heads down with steady bursts.   

Baxter dived into the shadows under a tree, and then sat up to give them full automatic from closer by.  Shots ripped up the night, tore leaves spinning from the trees. 

“On me!” Baxter yelled. 

“Coming to you!”  He rolled his legs under him, and sprang to his feet, but just as he’d tipped forward in the beginning of his run, bullets began to chop at the ground around him.  Someone had him dead-to-rights!  _Fucking HMGs!_   He dived backward and hit the ground rolling a heartbeat before they could correct their aim. 

“Fuck!” 

He was exposed, naked under that fire, and he jinked left and then right, and then slid like a baseball player into cover at the base of a tree.  He sat up, one knee up, supporting the M4, and scanned to find the shooter, but whoever it was didn’t have a bead on him from here.  He was out of sight.  “Baxter!” he bawled.  “Get outta here!”

“Scott!” Baxter yelled.  He could see the other man’s figure, and he was moving.  Coming back for Scott, the stupid fuck. 

“No!” Scott bawled at him.  “Get the fuck outta here!  I’ll go round!”  He lunged around the tree, firing in short sharp bursts.  He could at least keep their heads down; weigh the air down with metal so that Baxter could get further away. 

Baxter disappeared, hidden in the green fuzz of the night vision.  Scott’s scopes were still flickering like crazy strobes from muzzle flashes.  The concussions had partly deafened him again, but he had an idea that they were dying down. 

Which meant Alpha Team was clear away.  Which meant Baxter was out, and running free.  Which meant the bad guys just had one target still in their sights – _him_.  He was alive, he figured, because _they_ didn’t have night vision.  He could see them; assholes could not see him, and the thick bush made their jobs even harder.  He needed to get out before they all turned around, and coordinated their search for him. 

He changed mags.  He wasn’t expecting to fire so many rounds tonight – they were supposed to have _controlled_ this action, not be fighting for their lives!  They were supposed to have achieved _surprise_ , not toddled into an ambush!  This was a cluster-fuck! 

“Fuck me!” he yelled, outraged. 

Bullets thumped into the wood of the tree, suddenly.  He swivelled on his heels, banging in the magazine with his palm, searching out the source of the firing, and then it was gone.  He saw a man in the green shadows jerking on the ground, flapping in his death-throes.  Julia Richmond, taking a hand.

“Thanks, Jules!” he sang out.  

" _My pleasure,_ " she said in his radio. 

More movement on that side.  _Let’s go, Ghostbusters!_   He sprang to his feet.  He bolted to his left, going back the way they’d come, firing continuously to clear his path.  There was no firing that side, so maybe there weren’t any bad guys -  

Wrong, wrong, _wrong_ , _Damienyoustupid_ … bullets were whanging and zipping around him, and he pirouetted and darted back, changing mags again. 

He’d go around.  Run around the back of the truck, and take the assholes at the back up the bunghole. 

There were men to his right, and his left, silhouetted against the floodlights, and they had him between them.  Where the fuck did _they_ come from?  Nowhere to run.  He was stuck between them, but they were milling around, unsure of where he was.  They couldn’t see him, didn’t know where to look.  He could use that.  He planted his back against the outbuilding, and emptied another mag at them on fully automatic. 

He saw two drop, a third was walloped forward by a sniper shot arriving in his back, and the rest ducked.  He sprang out of his corner and closed the distance to them, opening fire as he came.  He dropped to one knee, and grabbed at his pocket for the next magazine, and his fingers felt nothing. 

It took a long lonely aeon for his brain to register the emptiness of that pocket.  _Damien, you **stupid fuck!**_   He’d left half of his magazines behind because he couldn’t fit them under the fucking sweatshirt!  “Fuck me!”  he screamed at himself in fury. 

He was surrounded; he was going to be taken prisoner; he was dead.

But _they_ hadn’t registered it yet.  They were still ducking, they were still working their way through the picture.  As he looked he saw one of them drop, head-shot.  He threw the M4 aside like a baseball bat and whipped out the Beretta, and ran straight at them. 

He vaulted one, and shot another.  “Fuck you,” he roared, as the Beretta pecked down and thumped bullets at a third man, and then he was past them, running, fleeing. 

 

* * *

 

Richmond saw it happen.  Through a narrow gap in the trees and outbuildings, she saw Scott reappear, as if between two pieces of stage setting.  He jinked wildly, sprinting between the trees.  He disappeared from sight, and reappeared, framed against the flank of the grenade-battered container.

And then the sides of the container seemed to ripple with arriving bullets, and Scott threw himself off his feet, falling end over end and slamming into the side of the container.  The heavy bullets were chopping at the container like invisible teeth, tracing toward his body, and she tracked their trajectory to the fourth container, the one almost facing Scott across the yard. 

They’d got the HMG out of the container, there.  The barrel was free to swivel, and she fired a single shot into the chest of the man with his hands on the weapon’s trigger.  He fell backward into the dark doorway, taking the man behind him down with him in a tangle. 

“Come on, come on, come _onnn_ ,” she hissed at Scott, from two hundred metres away. 

But Scott had been hit.  He was rolling himself over, his head hanging.  He raised himself to a sitting position, and then doubled over again, a hand to his neck.  Blood was pouring down the front of the grey hoodie, but he straightened himself up and forced himself up to his feet against the container.  His hands brought up the Beretta, and he began to run again, wobbling, and then the HMG was back into operation. 

The bullets began to chew up the wall.  She saw Scott throw himself wildly to his left, and the bullets stopped, an invisible wall of lead keeping him there, trapping him.

“Come on!” she yelled at him.  “Go around again!” 

But there was another man coming up from Scott’s left, meeting him, a handgun raised.  She saw this man yell something at Scott, then the handgun’s slide jumped, and Scott fell again. Point blank range, a double-tap to the chest.  Scott went down and stayed down. 

“No!” she yelled, and plucked at the Dragunov’s trigger, but the shot went wild in shock, and Scott’s killer leapt out of sight, his hands coming up to shield his head.  He was gone.  “No!” she screamed, in rage, and sent a bullet through the tree, hoping to feel him out by rage alone. 

“ _Bravo Three!_ ”  Dalton’s voice in her ear.  “ _Fall back!_ ”

She took her eye from the scope, and suddenly Scott’s death was two hundred yards away and _tiny_.  She saw Dalton and Stonebridge pounding past, and she suddenly realized that she could _see_ them.  Dawn was coming. 

“ _ERV One!_ ” Stonebridge yelled. 

She lifted to her hands and knees, and then to her feet, the nausea making her muscles loose as jelly.  The Dragunov seemed heavy, as she turned and began to run towards Stonebridge, closing with his course, catching up. 

 

* * *

 

Maggie gasped for air at the sight of Scott hitting the ground.  Both hands clapped over her mouth. 

“No!” she wheezed, breathless.

The figure on the screen stayed down. 

The man who had shot him came to stand over him.  Even from above they could see the triangle of his arms, holding the handgun on Scott in an Isosceles stance.  The foreshortened figure moved in on Scott, and through Scott’s headset they heard him shout what he’d shouted before.  And then the crack of two more shots. 

 

* * *

 

“Fall back on the truck!” 

Stonebridge went down on one knee, sending covering fire in short bursts.  He took down the two men closest to him, and then without waiting leaped to his feet.  “Go, go, go!” 

He followed Dalton, through the dark.   The ground was level, at least, even off the road.  It would be stupid to run full tilt down an obvious exfil path, and so their route curved off to one side and then back in toward ERV 1.  They reached the lightning-struck tree that marked ERV 1, and Dalton called a halt. 

“Zero, status?” 

Sinclair’s voice seemed to crackle a bit, as if they were losing signal.  “ _Uh, they’ve disengaged.  No pursuit yet._ ” 

“Bravo Three, Bravo Leader,” Dalton called, “Where are you?”

“ _Bravo Three, coming up to ERV right now!_ ” 

“Come ahead!” 

Stonebridge turned sharply as a shape appeared to his right.  “It’s me!” Richmond shouted.   She closed rapidly with them both. 

“Bravo One, we’re falling back to ERV Two,” Dalton said.  “Let’s go!”  She took off, and they broke into a run. 

“Where are Scott and Baxter?”  Stonebridge called to Richmond. 

“Baxter’s coming!”  Richmond said. 

ERV 2 was their second emergency rendezvous point: a hundred metres away from their transport.

Stonebridge could feel the difference in weight from the ammunition he’d discharged.  Even so, his boots seemed too heavy.  Each stride seemed to take him clumping over the ground, more rhino than man.  He could see Dalton’s shape, silhouetted against a sky that was beginning to burn emerald with the coming of daylight.

There was a burst of gunfire behind him.  He paused, and swung around, his M4 coming up, checking their back trail, but there was nothing behind them.  In the confusion, their enemies had lost track of where they were.  The shots weren’t heading anywhere near their direction.  They had to be shooting at shadows; _if_ they weren’t shooting at Scott and Baxter. 

He spun around as soon as he was sure they weren’t being followed, and ran after Dalton and Richmond.  Constant running, training, aerobic exercises, weightlifting… it paid off when you had to hump a heavy M4 for a long way in the dark over rough ground.  

The Pajero was where they’d left it, a dark green cinderblock in the dark.  Dalton took up position away from it and checked it out, and Stonebridge took up a rear-guard position over her.  They wouldn’t simply gallop up to their transport, in case it was already the centre of a set of crosshairs. 

“Bravo One!”  Dalton hissed.  “Bravo Four!  We are at ERV 2, eyes on transport.  What’s your position?”

“ _Bravo Four_ ,” Baxter’s voice sounded strangled.  “ _Coming up on ERV 2._ ” 

“Bravo One!”  Dalton hissed. 

There was no reply. 

“Bravo One, state your position,” Dalton repeated. 

The sick nausea in Stonebridge’s gut swept up inside him.  He took a hand off the M4 and wedged his earbud closer into his ear, suddenly desperate lest he be missing some inaudible whisper over the radio.  “Scott,” he hissed, “Where the fuck are you, buddy?”

“ _Bravo Leader_ ,” Sinclair barked, suddenly sounding angry and scared; the note in his voice startled Stonebridge.  “ _Be advised, enemy is taking to vehicles.  Get moving, or stand by for contact!_ ” 

“Transport is all clear,” Richmond said.  She’d seen nothing through her scope; no-one hiding around the Pajero waiting to plaster them as soon as they reached it.  “I’m going!”  She lifted from her crouch and ran across the space between them and the Pajero. 

The doors were unlocked.   Stonebridge waited a moment for Dalton to go, and then followed them.  He brought up the rear, his M4 scanning 180 degrees around their trail.  He pulled open the Pajero’s rear door, and jumped in, bracing the door open with one foot so as to act as tail gunner.  Under him the Pajero throbbed into life.  “I’m in!” he yelled. 

“Bravo Four, Bravo One, get a move on!” Dalton yelled, abandoning covertness for volume as Richmond pumped the accelerator. 

The Pajero was moving.  The door wanted to close with the car’s swing around.  He took the weight of it on the sole of his boot, holding it open. 

“Wait,” he barked. 

There was a silhouette behind the Pajero, moving up fast: a running man with a weapon swinging in the low-ready position.  “Friendly incoming!” he yelled for Richmond and Dalton’s benefit. 

“Wait for me!” Baxter yelled, outside of the radio.  “Coming to you!” 

“Come ahead!”  Stonebridge yelled.  “Come on, come on, come on!” 

Richmond wasn’t waiting.  She gunned the engine, slewing the big car around in a tight turn.  Baxter ran, and Stonebridge could see the barrel of his weapon flapping up and down as he pelted as hard as he could.  At the last moment, Stonebridge booted the door as hard as he could, and then yanked his leg out of the way as Baxter dived headfirst over him into the back compartment of the Pajero. 

Suddenly-arriving Irishman collided with Stonebridge, knocking him backwards into the tipped-up back seat.  Baxter scrambled completely over him, sprawling into the back compartment, his equipment clattering in the dark.  “I’m in!”

Richmond gunned the engine, and Stonebridge felt gravity pull at him as they accelerated. 

“Wait!” he roared.  “Man missing!  Scott’s not with us!”

“Bravo One’s still out!”  Dalton said. 

“I don’t know where he is!” Baxter yelled. "He was behind me!"

“Bravo One’s not coming!” Richmond yelled, up ahead. 

“What?  No!”  Baxter yelled back.  “He was right on my six, he’s coming!  He was just on my six!” 

“He’s _not coming!_ ” Richmond said.  The car slewed sideways, as if she was driving half blind even with the goggles on her face.  "He's KIA!" 

The Pajero was too full, too dark, too many voices shouting at once, and Stonebridge couldn’t understand. KIA?  Nonsense.  “We’ve got to wait for him!” he yelled.  He raised himself, ready to leap over to the forward part of the Pajero. 

"Michael, stop!" Baxter yelled into his face.  

“We’ve got to go back and wait for him!  Stop the car!”

“He’s not coming!” Richmond yelled back.  “Didn’t you hear me?  He’s gone!  He’s KIA, Michael!” 

“He’s not!”  Stonebridge yelled at her, desperate to make her understand.  “Jesus Christ, we’ve got to pick him up, he’s _alone_ back there!”  He turned around on his haunches in the narrow dark coffin of the Pajero. 

“Keep driving!” Dalton ordered. 

“We can’t leave him there!”  He launched himself at the open door of the Pajero.  “Stop the car!”  If they wouldn’t stop he would jump.  “Scott!”  

“Michael!” 

He reached the open door, but there were hands pulling at him.  They clawed for purchase on his body armour, and dragged at him, and he lost balance and fell over backwards.  He crashed over against the side of the Pajero, his gun falling away out of his grip, and Baxter was above him.  “Hold your horses!”  Baxter yelled above him. 

“Let me go!  We have to go back!”  He thrashed to get up, but Baxter had him, and he was flattened under Baxter’s weight.  Something in his mind flashed horribly back to the night Kate died, but _that_ night it had been Scott pulling him down.  “ _Scott!_ ” he howled.  “ _Sco-o-ott!_ ”

“We can’t go back!” Richmond yelled at him, and her voice cracked.  “He’s dead, Michael!  I saw it happen.  I saw him die.  Damien Scott is dead.” 

 

* * *

 

Scott  - or at least, Scott’s corpse – still wore a radio transmitter. 

Sinclair reached over to Primary One, and tapped in a code none of the active teams knew existed.  It could override the microphone settings, and switch the transmitter remotely to a hot mike.  He could listen in on any of their conversations, if the inane blither of bored soldiers in a long OP had been worth hearing. 

_“What the fuck d’ja shoot him for, bub?”_

_“He’s bad guy!”_

_“We coulda taken him alive!  Fuckin’ wop, whatcha do that for?”_

A third accent spoke up _.  “_ Salaud! _Don’t call heem wop!”_

Another voice arrived, another accent, and this one was cold and clipped; accented, but fluent.  _“Why did you shoot him?”_

The other voices in the background dropped away.  _“I thought we are supposing to shoot the enemy…”_

_“Take those goggles off; let us see who he is.”_

There was a momentary silence. 

 _“I know him.  He is Damien Scott.”_   The man corrected himself.  _“_ Was _Damien Scott.”_

 _“The man from the airport?”_ the commander asked.

_“Si, that is him.”_

_“So that’s the great famous Damien Scott?”_ the first voice spoke. _“He doesn’t look so great anymore.”_

_“You.  Search him.  See if he is carrying anything.”_

There were another few moments of silence.  Then the second voice – Scott’s killer - spoke up.  _“Here’s a radio transmitter…”_

 _“Ah, yes.  Command and control.  Give it here.”_   There was a momentary silence, and then the commander spoke again, loud and clear. 

 _“Hello, Section Twenty.  Are you listening to me?  Yes, of course you are.  Your man is dead.  You cannot stop Conrad Knox.  You cannot stand in the way of progress.  You are too heavily outnumbered.  Go home, and leave_ _Africa_ _to her destiny.”_

The radio made a sharp crack sound, and then the transmission was dead.  The signal on the main screen labelled _B1_ dropped to a flat line.  They had destroyed the transmitter. 

Sinclair sagged down into his chair, his hand over his brow.

“I don’t understand,” Maggie said. 

“This was planned,” Sinclair said.  “Toufeeq set this up.  He set _us_ up.” 

“Where the hell did they all come from?  I thought there were only seven warm bodies there?”

“They were hiding, all day.  They must have had heat-shields – space blankets and wool, or something, blocking their thermal signatures. Taliban trick.”

“That phone call…”

“That was bait.  No wonder they didn’t show up to meet you last night.  Toufeeq was planning _this_.”

“We were set up.”  Maggie turned around and faced the main screen.  “And Damien Scott is dead…”   

 

* * *

 

Stonebridge clumped into the Crib.  He dropped his rifle on the light-table, and his helmet on the floor, and sagged into a chair.  His bones felt as heavy as lead. 

It was too much. 

Scott wasn’t supposed to die!  No-one was _supposed_ to die, but _especially_ not Scott.  They weren’t finished yet!  They weren’t supposed to end, half-in-love, like this!  He hadn’t finished telling Scott what he felt about him yet! 

He’d loved Scott, and he’d hated Scott, and he’d counted on having Scott around to share those feelings with, even if Scott was his enemy, even if Scott had betrayed him.  He hadn’t finished being angry with him, and now he would never get the chance to _stop_ being angry with him!  He’d counted on time with Scott to finish the burning hot conversations they still had to have, and now that heat had nowhere to go.  They weren’t supposed to just _end_ , like this! 

He sagged over, and put his brow into his hands.  The tears pressed against his eyes, but he forced them back by squeezing his eyes closed tightly and gritting his teeth. 

He was hardly aware of the others, but he realized that they had all been silent, speechless, when Sinclair spoke and broke the silence. 

“He fought until he ran out of ammunition.”

“I saw it happen,” Richmond said.  Her voice was thick.  “They caught him between them, and one of them shot him, at point blank range.”

Stonebridge pressed his fists into his eye sockets. 

He heard a wet sniff, and realized that Richmond was crying, and trying not to show it.  He looked up, at the rest of them. 

Richmond was sagging, staring at her feet, her lips rumpled down and her eyes red.  Baxter was sitting staring down into his own night vision goggles closely as if preparing to vomit into the eyepieces.  Maggie sat, huddled around herself, sagging as if shocked into paralysis.  Her gaze was fixed on the ground, her head so low it looked as if she was about to tip forward out of her chair and collapse onto the floor. 

“We were getting out the back,” Baxter said.  “I went first, he followed.  He started taking fire, so he told me to go on.”

“He saved all our necks,” Dalton said.  “I thought he was a liability, but…” 

“He was the best combat soldier I’ve ever fought with,” Richmond said. 

He was the best combat soldier Stonebridge had ever fought with, too.  And the oddest, and the wildest, and he’d whooped and he’d laughed and he’d drunk and he’d shagged Stonebridge … Scott could not be _dead!_   It was impossible.  It was hilariously wrong.  It was unthinkable for that light to have gone out. 

And yet his brain knew that Scott was gone. 

He ground his teeth so hard his molars groaned with pressure.  His muscles ached. 

Maggie raised her head.  “Somebody is going to have to tell his mother,” she said. 

Someone was going to have to call that woman, with the iron-grey hair and the dancer’s posture and Scott’s wide blue eyes, and tell her that one of her sons was dead… Someone was going to have to call a mother and tell her one of her babies had been shot dead in Africa. 

“She certainly should not hear about it through his funeral policy,” Sinclair agreed. 

“I’ll do it,” Stonebridge said.  “I’ve spoken to her over Skype.” 

“I’ll do it,” Maggie said, without looking at him.  “I’ve met her.”

“You have?” He looked at her. 

“I’ve known Damien a long time,” she said.  She did not raise her head to meet his eyes, but kept her gaze on the floor.

“Not yet,” Dalton decided.  “Not until we know _we’re_ secure.  Where are they, Sinclair?”

Sinclair inhaled, as if refilling his lungs after a long dive.  “They gave up the chase after you ducked onto that farm road.  They appear to be policing their brass, and dismantling the ambush.  They’ll head out soon.”

“Track them,” Dalton ordered. 

“I’m doing it.” 

“They’ll hit a town, ditch the cars, and disperse into the local population,” Baxter said, gloomily.  “They won’t lead us to Camp B.  They’re not amateurs.” 

“If they turn in this direction, give the alarm,” Dalton ordered.  “We’ll meet them on our turf.  For now, somebody put the kettle on.  Clean weapons, eat, wash…” 

They moved to obey.  Scott was dead, but even in the midst of death, the necessities of life and war must go on.  Stonebridge shoved himself to his feet, feeling heavy and yet hollow. 

“Here,” Richmond said.  “Before we go anywhere.” 

She came out from behind the lockers with a long glass bottle in one hand, and a set of shot-glasses pinched in her fingers.  She handed the shot glasses to Stonebridge, and then took out a square of photographic paper from under her elbow. 

The others gathered around, and she put the photograph into the light screen, in front of all of them. 

It was a picture of Scott.  He wore his UK fatigues, and a beret low over his forehead.  He was clean-shaven, and frowned out of the photograph with an expression of nearly cross-eyed sobriety. 

Stonebridge had not been there when the photograph was taken, and realized with a gulp that he would never be able to ask Scott about it. 

There was no need to explain to Maggie what they were doing.  She took a shot glass, and held it up, as Stonebridge shared out the glasses, and Richmond poured a shot of whisky into each one. 

“Scott would be peeved that this is Scotch whisky, not American,” Baxter said.  He held the glass up between finger and thumb, and toasted the picture.  “To Damien Scott.” 

“Damien Scott.”  Dalton raised her glass, and downed the shot in one gulp. 

“To Scott,” Richmond said.  “A good friend.  I’m going to miss you, Salladhor.”  She drank, and then sniffed. 

“To Scott.”  Sinclair raised his glass. “To a trouble-maker _par excellence_.” 

It was Stonebridge’s turn.  He raised the glass.  He wanted to say something hearty, something about Scott’s fighting skills, his combat effectiveness, the best team-mate he’d ever known, but he looked at the serious expression the photograph wore, the blankness there, and words would not come. 

“Screw it,” Maggie said.  She put the glass down, untouched.  “ _That’s_ not the Scott I know.” 

“What are you _doing?_ ”  Stonebridge demanded, offended. 

“I’ve got something better.”  She pulled her camera out of her bag, and flicked on the view screen.  "Hang on a sec."  A few beeps came out of the camera, and she balanced the long camera on the table next to the print, so they could all see it.  "There."  

It was another picture of Scott. 

Scott was lounging, one arm draped on a car’s window, his head rolled back.  He was grinning back at the camera with delight and mischief and sheer _joie de vivre_.  The glint of light in his eyes was alive, even trapped in the small viewfinder of Maggie’s camera. 

“ _That’s_ the Scott I know,” Stonebridge said.  He clamped down on his teeth to prevent his voice from wobbling. 

“Well, we’ve got two pictures,” Richmond said.  “Let’s take a drink to both of them.”  She poured herself and Baxter another glass.  “To Damien Scott.” 

“To Damien Scott,” Maggie said.  “To chivalry and shit-stirring.”  She raised the glass. 

Stonebridge found himself staring at the picture, while another round was drunk to the memory of Damien Scott.  Scott, alive and happy.  He’d kissed that mouth.  He’d stroked that brow.  He’d heard Scott’s voice for over a year, and now he would never hear it again. 

He became aware of a silence around him. 

“Michael?”

“I’m not doing it.”  The decision had made itself.  He still held the glass, and he set it down on the light table.  “I’m going to get him back.” 

“Michael.  He’s …”

“Leave no man behind, yeah?” he cut Richmond off, dropping his hand like an axe.  “I’m not drinking to his memory while he’s lying out there somewhere.” 

“He’s dead,” Sinclair said.  “He’s not going to know about it.” 

“This isn’t about him.  I’m not going to speak to his mother and say, yeah, he’s dead, but we left him out there, so you won’t even have a body to bury.  He deserves _better_.”

“Cre…” Baxter began to say, and Richmond hit him; a straight jab to the shoulder.

“We’re not throwing away another life today,” Dalton said. 

“ _You_ don’t have to.  It’s my life.  No-one else needs to come.  They won’t be expecting any of us back soon, and if they are, I’ll take a flag of truce.”

“They’re criminals! They won’t recognise a white flag!” 

“I’m still going.  I left him behind in Niamey.  I’m not leaving him behind again.”  He picked up the M4A1, and swung the weapon over his shoulder.  “You’ll do over watch for me?” he asked Richmond, cramming the mags into his cargo pockets.

“Uh, OK,” Richmond agreed.  “Wait, take the Dragunov.”  She pushed it over.  “It’s cleaner.” 

“He’s dead!”  Dalton stormed around the light table.  “Stand down, soldier!”

He ignored her.  He picked up spare magazines for the Dragunov, and loaded them into his pockets. 

“This mission requires all of us, on board and facing the right way.  I understand what he means to you.  He’s important.  I get that.  But Scott was expendable.  We are all expendable.”  

“Yes,” he snapped, “Scott _said_ you chewed people up and spat them back out again.  Well, he’s not expendable to me.  He’s worth more than that.” 

“You do not have orders to fetch him back!”  Nobody was backing her up.  Even Sinclair had folded his arms behind his back, unwilling to voice an order that was clearly being ignored. 

“Orders?  You’re going to stand there and talk to me about _orders?_ "

He lost his temper, then, and swung back to face her.  He could feel the anger throbbing in him, could feel the rage tightening his jaw, and forced words out past his gritted teeth.  He jabbed his index finger at her. 

“ _You_ told me to form an attachment.  _You_ told me to fuck him.  _Your_ orders.  So I fucked him, and I fell in love with him.  That’s what happens when you order one queer to honey-trap another! _Your_ orders, and _you_ have to deal with the consequences." 

“You’re not queer!”

“I bloody well am, and you should have thought of that before you assumed that every married man you meet is straight! He wasn't my partner, he was my _lover!_ I’m going!”

He turned on his heel and stamped out, swatting the plastic screens of the Crib aside.

 

* * *

 

“I’ll have his career for that,” Dalton snapped.  “He’s thrown my orders into my face.”  She marched a few strides away, and then back.  “I can have him court-martialled.”

“No, you will not,” Sinclair said. 

They stood in the long dawn shadow of the wind-pump; as much privacy as they could get in such a small base.  Stonebridge was long gone. 

“Why not, precisely, Major?” 

“He just came out of the closet to the whole unit!”

“He disobeyed a direct order,” Dalton said.  “That’s grounds for a court-martial.” 

“They _all_ disobey direct orders, all the time!” Sinclair said.

“And yet they take orders from you!”  she said.  “Not one of them backed me up in there.  Why do they take orders from you?”

“They don’t take orders from me!” Sinclair said, as if despairing of making her see.  “I don’t _give_ them orders.  I make things happen in the background, so they can give _themselves_ orders.” 

“That’s no way to run a military unit.” 

“This isn’t a military unit!” Sinclair said.  “This is a team that _does not exist_.  Section Twenty is beyond military discipline because it _does not exist_.  None of this can get beyond the walls of this house, because it could blow the lid off the whole unit.  What do you think the media will make of a sexual scandal in a secret military organisation that _does not exist?_ ”

“He wouldn’t risk the unit for his own sake.”

“Even _he_ doesn’t even know what he’s going to do next.  Scott said he’s just this side of going completely mad.”

“Scott said … but Scott is gone.” 

“Exactly.  Without Scott around…? I don’t know what he’s capable of doing in his current state, but we will _not_ keep control of the situation by expecting the usual standards.  We cannot take this further, because if we try, we _could_ end up seeing ‘Gay Sex SAS Scandal’ all over the Daily Mail."

"You think I should just... what?  Just let him get on with it."

"Yes.  Precisely.  At least out _here_ he can’t do Section Twenty any damage.”

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

## Wednesday morning,

## Northern Cape

Staying still was agony. 

Scott’s neck was twisted to one side.  He could feel his old friend, that left SCM muscle, starting to protest.  He couldn’t afford to twitch, couldn’t afford the slightest movement to relax that tightening muscle. 

 _Don’t move_ , he told himself.  _Keep limp.  Breathe into your stomach…_

He could hear voices immediately above him. 

“You should not have shot him,” Silent Bob said. 

The urge to open his eyes and look at the speakers was almost overwhelming.  _Don’t move…_

“I do not know it is him!” Andy Correia protested.  “He is wearing … glasses… the…”  Andy gave up on English, and reverted to Spanish.  “ _Gafas de visión nocturna!_ How am I seeing his face in those?”

He’d been able to close his eyes, at least, behind the goggles.  And he hadn’t had to fake his collapse.  The double-tap from Andy’s handgun had thumped into his body armour hard enough to knock the breath out of him. 

The hands that had roamed his body were Andy’s.  Andy had stripped him of his ammunition, and his radio, and his watch, and the Glock.  Scott had felt Andy’s fingers fish his radio receiver out of his ear, but his body armour was still hidden under his sweatshirt. 

“We could have used him,” Silent Bob said.  “We could have made him talk to us.” 

If not for Andy, he might have been better off dead.  He’d been on the breaking-down end of that sort of _talk_ before.  He didn’t know if he could take it again. 

“He is dead now.  And they have losing one of their best soldiers, si?”  Andy said, with his usual buckshot approach to English tenses when he was stressed.  “This is good!” 

 _Don’t move… keep limp_. 

“This is not good!  You idiot!  I do not know why Matlock wanted to hire you!  We had him in our fingers!”

“Mr Matlock hire me because I am the top man with explosives in South America!”  Andy’s voice grew indignant.  “You have no-one else who can be blow up …”

“Shut up,” Silent Bob snapped.  “ _You_ killed him, _you_ can deal with the bodies.  Take the yellow thing… that one… and take them all out there and bury them there.  You can use that thing?  Then you dig a hole with it and bury them.”

“Where?” 

Silent Bob snapped a curse in a language Scott recognised as a dialect of Arabic.  “Out of sight!” 

Their footsteps went away. 

A moment later, footsteps came back, and he heard the shutter-clicking of a digital camera.  The assholes were taking pictures of their trophy. 

 _Keep limp_ , he told himself.  _Breathe into your stomach_.  

Around him, he could hear voices, and enough sounds to tell him that they were breaking camp.  These guys were pros.  They packed up very little fuss; breaking guns and packing boxes and policing their brass without the need for orders.  When the police came around, they’d find no traceable evidence – assuming the SA police even _noticed_ a balls-to-the-wall fire fight on their doorstep in the first place. 

His body wasn’t touched; he was dead and of no more interest. 

He could see light behind his eyelids.  Pretty soon the sun was going to rise, and then he’d start to cook on the tar like a barbeque sausage.  _Breathe into your stomach.  Don’t cough, don’t sneeze, don’t have a muscles spasm, and for fuck’s sake Damien, don’t fall asleep._

 _Don’t laugh, either_. 

It suddenly occurred to him that if they were going to leave the place and hide all the evidence, they might decide to just torch the place instead.  It would be less trouble than removing all the evidence piece by piece.  They might decide to burn the place down, with their dead inside.

Fuck that, he decided.  If he found himself being dumped inside one of the containers, he’d jump up and try to fight his way out.  He’d lose, but he’d fight to the last cartridge.  _Anything_ was better than being burned.  He _hated_ fire. 

There was the rumble of a deep diesel engine, approaching.  He heard footsteps, and a moment later he was grabbed by the ankles and armpits and manhandled off the ground.  His body was turned, and he felt himself carried across the ground.  _Stay lim_ p, he told himself, but the difference in position was a relief as sweet as honey to his muscles. 

“ _Un…_ ”  Deep French voices; Congolese, maybe? 

“ _Deux…_ ”

“ _Trois…!_ ”  And on _three_ , they tossed him. 

He felt himself flying, and then crashed down painfully against a curved surface.  It went _bong_ under him in a deep metallic voice.  He overrode the instinct to catch himself, and let gravity take over.  He slid down into the corner of whatever he lay in, and stayed there.  His neck was at a cock-eyed angle again, but for now that was A-OK.

Whatever he was sitting in, it was vibrating under him.  The ‘yellow thing,’ he realized, was a digger-loader. 

And he was only the first corpse to be thrown into it.  More followed, laid on top of him with rather more ceremony than he’d been shown.  Section Twenty had kicked ass, and there were rather a lot of them. 

The weight on top of him grew; a suffocatingly-heavy pressure-blanket of meat.

 _Well,_ he told himself, _look on the bright side.  At least no-one will see you twitch_. 

On the _not-_ so-bright side, he was sharing his ride with corpses, doing what fresh corpses did.  His throat convulsed in reflex disgust, and he fought not to throw up. 

The digger-loader’s voice changed.  The front scoop bounced as the big machine bumbled into motion. 

 

* * *

 

 

“ _Bravo Two_ ,” Richmond spoke in Stonebridge’s ear.  “ _Zero_.”

It felt good to hear her voice in his ear.  All was not lost, if he could still hear Richmond’s calm directions.  “Zero,” he replied, one finger pressing the earpiece more firmly into his ear.  “Bravo Two here.” 

“ _Change your route.  They’re loaded their casualties into a digger-loader, and they’re driving them cross-country.  Our guess is they’re going to bury them out of sight.”_

He turned on the car’s turn signal, and pulled off onto the side of the road.  “Your advice?” he asked.

“ _Break the fence to the South-West of the property, move cross-country.  We’ll tell you when the digger stops, and you can move in and take them out._ ” 

“Roger that.” 

“ _Zero, over and out_.”

Scott was going to be buried with his enemies?  Not happening, Stonebridge thought.  Scott himself might not mind lying with his enemies, since Scott had a rather prosaic view of the world that didn’t involve any afterlife; comes of being a recovering-Catholic, Scott had told him once.  But Damien Scott was going home to his mother, not lying in an unmarked hole in an unmarked farm field in Africa. 

At the very least, Stonebridge would make sure to get the Paracord bracelet off his wrist.  According to the terms of a long-ago agreement, he would send that to Scott’s mother, in lieu of his body.  She knew what the bracelet signified; she would know what it meant.

If nothing else, seeing him again would give Stonebridge the chance to say goodbye. 

He’d gone out on this mission in anger, and he’d lost the man he’d been angry with, and he’d never be able to get that time back.  Scott was lost.  He would never be able to cover the angry distance between them with words and apologies. 

It was a truism of war that he’d learned from his grandfather, who’d seen too many ships go down in the U-boats’ war: the great tragedy of war was not that you yourself _might_ die, but that you _were_ going to lose people you loved.  People who you could not imagine absent from your life were going to disappear. 

Scott…  Kerry… Kate… Porter… He’d lost too many, in his own wars. 

And he had unfinished business with Scott.  He’d loved Scott, and Scott had not loved him.  He’d been angry… but at what, exactly?  He’d loved the life and liveliness of Scott, and his liveliness had included, part and parcel of him, his promiscuity.  He’d known Scott ran wild, and he’d fallen in love with that wildness.  He could hardly blame Scott for being exactly the man Stonebridge had known he was. 

Scott had been his best friend, long before he was his lover.  He could have turned back the clock; gone back to their friendship.  Love and friendship were not antonyms, to Scott; but now Stonebridge had lost both his lover and his best friend.  The world was a much less cheerful place without Scott in it…

He found himself with tears in his eyes, blurring his vision of the road.  He wiped his eyes, trying to stem them, until he realized that he was alone.  He was alone, except for his memories of Scott, and Scott had never looked askance at emotions.  

On the other hand, Scott would _definitely_ have had something to say about Stupidbridge trying to drive when he could barely see for tears.  Muscles Are Required; Intelligence Not Essential…

He huffed at the thought, with a mixture of commemoration and grief, and pulled the car onto the shoulder.  He made sure his radio was turned off, put his forehead onto the steering wheel, and let his tears flow, alone.

 

* * *

 

 

The digger-loader came to a stop, and the engine cut out.  The queasy bobbing of the scoop gave a few last bounces, and then stilled. 

Scott lay under the weight of bodies above him, and waited. 

A moment later, the khaki legs on top of him were pulled away, and he opened his eyes. 

Randy Andy Correia looked down on him, with a halo of thin branches circling his head. 

“Wake up, my friend!” he said, in Spanish,  “This is the end of the line.” 

“Hah,” Scott said, relieved; and then,  “ _He-u-urgh-h-h!_   Get them _off_ me!” 

Andy dragged and shoved, and Scott shoved from underneath, and managed to worm his way out from under a few hundred kilograms of limp corpses.  He rolled over the edge of the scoop, and found only in mid-air that it was six feet off the ground.  He flattened his arms just as he thumped onto the dirt.  “ _Oof_ ,” he grunted. 

He rolled over and sat up.  He was under the scoop of a big yellow JCB, parked in the shade of the only tree for hundreds of yards. 

“Ugh,” Andy said, kneeling at his side.  “You stink.” 

“ _Yeerk_.”  His body was smeared with his own blood from the ricochet in his neck, and with blood and far worse liquids from his fellow passengers.  “Jesus Christ.”  He took out a Kleenex, and spat into it.  He tried to scrub at his face, desperate to feel clean again.  “ _Eurgh!_   Do you have any waterless cleaner?” 

“I have _yours_ ,” Andy said, apologetically, and held it out. 

“ _Aaah!_ ” He snatched it out of his hands, upturned it, and squeezed the whole tube out into his hands.  He scrubbed it at his face, around his nose and mouth. 

“I’m going to bury them here,” Andy said, jerking his head around them.  “You want a smoke?  We need to have a little chat first.” 

“They’ll miss you.”

“They’ll think the lazy Pocho is having a siesta under a tree.”  Andy gestured with one hand at the tree over his head.  “I will leave you here when I go back.” 

 “How did you know it was me?” 

Andy sat down under the tree, his back against the trunk.  “Who else goes into a fight shouting ‘ _fuck me!_ ’ every few steps?”  he shrugged.  “Only Damien Scott.”  

“You saved my ass, buddy.”  The waterless cleaner was drying in the morning breeze.  He still felt dirty, but there was nothing else he could do about it.  He sat down next to Andy under the tree.   

Andy shifted further away.  “That is _two_ lives you owe me, my friend.” 

“Yeah,” Scott said.  “I haven’t forgotten Ecuador.  I won’t ever forget Ecuador.”  He resigned himself to being dirty. He was the Shark in the Dark; he might as well stay as filthy on the outside as he was on the inside. 

Andy seemed to read the sudden darkness in his eyes.  “What happened in Ecuador was not your fault,” Andy told him. “Accidents happen.” 

“Yeah.”  He agreed with his words, but disagreed by changing the subject immediately.  “Listen, if my buddy Michael turns up, you sit tight and don’t make any sudden moves.  He’s one of those guys who gets angry and goes completely mad.”

“How will he turn up?”   

“He’ll turn up,” Scott said.  He _knew_ Michael.  He’d turn up, sooner or later, because Scott would do the same for him, and Michael knew it. 

 

* * *

 

 

“ _Bravo Two_ ,” Richmond spoke in his voice.  “ _Be advised, the digger has come to a stop under a tree._ ” 

“How many hostiles are there?” 

“ _At least one, possibly two_.” 

How could there be _possibly_ two, he wondered.  There was only one seat in the cab of a digger, unless one had taken a ride on the other’s lap. 

Then again, what with the things he had recently learned about the _other_ interesting ways soldiers entertained themselves, he wasn’t going to rule _anything_.  “Roger that,” he murmured.   

He got out of the Pajero, and closed the door behind him.  He swung the long Dragunov over his shoulder and set out across the brush, following Richmond’s compass bearings. 

 

* * *

 

 

“Have you seen them?”  Scott asked. 

“No.  Not the nuclear weapons.  They are at another camp, much further south.  Knox has many more men there, many more.” 

“Fuck,” Scott said. 

“I cannot get at the nuclear weapons without making anyone suspicious,” Andy said.  “So I have been taking small steps.” 

“Small steps to what?” Scott asked. 

Andy shrugged his shoulders.  “When I got here, I did a lot of thinking.  This Knox – he is mad.  Nuclear weapons?  Seriously?  Not even _Águilas Negras_ plays with that.  It is mad.  I cannot work with a madman.” 

“That’s a soldier’s job.  And you’re not a soldier.  You’re a businessman.” 

“I am a businessman.  No profit, no work.  So I think to myself, Antonio, you are mixed in with a mad.  How do you stop a mad, without the mad noticing you and killing you?”  He put another cigarette between his lips, and flicked the flint of his cigarette lighter.  His dark gaze stayed on Scott’s face, saturnine and curious. 

“How?” 

Andy took the cigarette out, and let out a stream of smoke from his nostrils like a Chinese dragon.  “Find the enemy of the mad, and work for _them_.” 

“But you haven’t.”  Scott took a last draw on his little stub, and flicked it aside.  “I’d know.” 

Andy laughed, and wagged the cigarette at him between two fingers.  “Not with _you!_   With the daughter.”

“Ava Knox?  You’re working for Ava Knox?”

“I made her an offer she cannot refuse,” Andy quoted, in English.  “And she take it.  For four time what her father paid me.”

“Fuck me,” Scott said.  He laughed, half-delighted, half-shocked at Andy’s daring.  “Dude, you are playing a real dangerous game.” 

Andy switched back to Spanish.  “Ah, but the dangerous game _is_ my game, if the price is right.  And what danger?  So what if I support the law, just this once?  Who will know?  Africa is a long way from Central America.  My reputation stays clean, and I go home with four times as much money.  Four times!  I can take a nice long holiday on the Costa del Sol.” 

“And you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you put a stop to nuclear weapons,” Scott agreed. 

“And that too,” Andy said.  He stubbed out the last of his cigarette.  “ _That_ is not a businessman’s game.” 

“It’s a soldier’s game,” Scott said. 

“Then perhaps it is good that I am not a soldier, eh? _My_ plan is not a soldier's plan. Listen...”

 

* * *

 

 

“ _Bravo, target is ahead of you_.” 

The land crested up slightly just here.  Stonebridge crept to just below the top of the crest, and dropped to one knee.  He raised his head up to glance over the skyline.  It was curved just enough that he had a clear view downhill.

The digger-loader was a big JCB.  It was just below him, parked next to a lone tree.  It sat like an orange pelican nesting in the rocky soil, its rear arm folded down and the steel beak resting on the ground.  “Have visual on the target.” 

“ _Be advised, two hostiles on the other side_.”

“Do not have visual on hostiles.”  There was no movement around the digger.  “Enfilading for a shufti.” 

He stooped and ran under the level of the ridge, careful not to kick up more dust than he had to.  He came to a stop about five metres further along the dyke, and closed up to the crest again.  He lowered himself to his stomach, listened, and then put the top of his hat over the ridgeline. 

He’d moved further behind the loader, so that he was off its right rear quarter.  There was no cover for a closer approach.  He would have to make a run for it, and take them by surprise. 

“Zero.  They’re sitting in the shade of the tree.”  He could see boots and camel-covered trouser legs extended into the sunshine around the corner of the loader.  He could also see a thin trail of smoke.  “They’ve stopped for a smoke break.” 

They’d shot Damien Scott dead like a dog, and now they were stopping for a ciggy like it was business as usual?  They were sitting on their arses having a bit of R & R?  Well, he was fucking well going to put a stop to _that_. 

To hell with just retrieving Scott.  He would take Scott, and he would take one of those bastards back alive.  One of those bastards was going to pay for his cigarette-break with an extended interview with a rubber hose and a shock-stick… Scott might have liked to preach _Ira Est Mortem_ , but Scott was gone, and Stonebridge was going to enjoy smashing his vengeance out on one of the men who killed him.

He ducked back below the crest to check the Dragunov one last time, and then coiled his legs under him.  “I’m going in…” 

 

* * *

 

 

“The boss,” Scott said.  “The guy you flew in with. We haven’t been able to pin a name on him.” 

“Toufeeq al-Tanzir.” 

“Toufeeq al-Tanzir,” Scott repeated the name so that he would be able to remember it.  “An Arab?” 

“Libyan.” 

“Libyan!  Shit.”

 The fall of Gadaffi had let loose a lot of his jackals on the world.  Some of them had fled, and were lying low outside Libya.  Some were lying low inside Libya, plotting their return to power one-day-some-day-maybe.  Still others, just like during the fall of the USSR, would be picked up by the overlapping circles of international crime, international terror, and international espionage, and would be absorbed in time into the murky soup of the global underworld. 

“One of the Colonel’s handpicked bravos.  Like the CIA in South America?  Only, for the Colonel’s neighbours.  His _sphere_ ,” and Andy hissed the word in English with all the contempt of a Latin American for US foreign policy.  He stuck his cigarette in his mouth and sucked on it as if to chase a bad taste out of his palate. 

“Gadaffi’s version of the KG-used-to-Be.”

“Tanzir was the elite of the elite.  Only you won’t know that, because he only made it his business to be the elite of the elite in countries no-one gives a shit about, understand?  Niger.  Chad.  Mali.  Sudan.”

 “No wonder we haven’t been able to pin a name to his face.”

“No Interpol in Chad, _amigo_.”  Andy switched back to English.  “Nobody watches, because nobody cares.” 

“Is he a soldier or a spy?” 

Andy shrugged his shoulders.  “Neither.  He is a disciple.  Tanzir – he stays, because he …” Andy waved his cigarette,  “Is _another_ mad.   He believe in the Colonel.  He think the Colonel is the right man for Africa.  Do you remember the United States of Africa?”  Andy had had enough of English practice, and switched back to Spanish.  “ _L_ _os Estados Unidos de_ _África?_   You remember that nonsense?”

“ _Si_ ,” Scott agreed. 

“Of course you do.  Well, to Tanzir, it’s not nonsense.  Oh no, it’s the _future_.  The _brave new world_.  Freeing Africa from colonial oppression!  Getting Africa to a point where her voice is _listened_ to!  _Blah blah blah_.  And Conrad Knox is _just_ the man to make it happen.”

“Shit.” 

“Shit?  It’s not _shit._   It’s mad.  And Tanzir has found himself another Messiah.  He’s not a mercenary.  He’s never been a mercenary.  He believed in Gadaffi, and now he believes in Knox.  They are a fanatical movement.  Made out of _two._ ”

“Didn’t take more than two, in Boston…”  Scott broke off his words as he noticed the sudden change in the shadow of the JCB.  “Heads up!”  he barked. 

There was the rush of feet on gravel.  In the same moment a tan figure sprang from the left of the scoop.  He was aware of Andy on the right, diving to the right with the speed of a departing lizard.  

Scott yelled and threw up his hands. 

“Jesus!” burst out of him. 

But the figure over him was very familiar.  The black barrel of a very familiar gun aimed at him for rather a long moment; a long, _long_ heartbeat. 

“Fuck!” he yelled, “It’s me!” 

And then the hard blue eyes seemed to come into focus, and the barrel wobbled out of line.  “Scott?”  Michael said, in a small voice. 

“Who were you expecting, Robert E Lee?”  He lowered his hands, and scrambled to his feet out from under the scoop.  “Jesus!  Stop aiming that thing at me!” 

“You’re _alive?_ ” 

“Of course I’m alive!” 

“Bloody hell!”  Michael seemed to be catching up with events quickly, for a cement-headed Englishman, and his face was starting to glow with a rather flattering expression of joy.  “You’re ALIVE!”  He dropped the Dragunov onto its slings, and threw himself forward. 

A second later Scott found himself being slammed by a wall of muscle and squeezed in arms of steel.  The hug nearly pressed all the air out of him, so that he grunted.  Michael was hugging him so hard he was shaking him vigorously.  Michael thought he was cute; and like a puppy, he was getting _squeezed_.  He yelped and flapped his arms. 

Michael released the pressure.  “You’re alive!” he yelled, and then pulled out of the hug far enough to come back in for a deep kiss, full on Scott’s lips. 

The kiss lasted only a moment.  One second his mouth was full of deliriously joyful Englishman.  The next second Michael was pulling away to arms’ length, just as suddenly.  His expression of joy was suddenly overlaid with a current of worried distaste.  “Er… you don’t smell very nice, mate,” Michael said.  

“Yeah.  I took a ride in a hearse.”  He extricated himself from the hug by grabbing Michael’s arms, and unwinding them from his body like a python.  And what the fuck had Andy made of that kiss, anyway?  Where had Andy gone?

He pointed in the direction of the JCB, just in case Slowbridge hadn’t got the idea that Scott’s resurrection had needed a friendly helping hand.  “Friendly!” he declared.   

The Dragunov jerked back into line again as Michael realized he was still supposed to be on a mission.  Michael backed up, so as to edge around the front corner of the JCB while keeping out of grabbing range.  “Oy.  You!  Come out where I can see you!”  he barked. 

Scott followed in Michael’s footsteps, rounding the corner of the loader at a discreet distance.  It felt strange to be following Mikey in battle dress without his own kit or weapons.  It felt as if he was a spectator; doing Michael’s job as a DI.  “Michael – _friendly!_ ” 

“Yes, I heard you the first time.  You.  Out.” 

“Antonio, this is my friend Michael,” Scott called.  “ _El es el que se vuelve loco_.” 

“Friendly! _Si._ ”  Andy stood in the shadow of the loader’s arm, his own machine gun aimed in Michael’s direction.  He took his hand off the trigger and held the weapon up slowly in one hand, and then held the gun out to his side at arm’s length.  “I put it down.”  He did, bending his knees and putting the gun on the sand.

Michael’s gun lowered.  “You’re _alive!_ ” he said sidelong to Scott, without taking his hard eyes off Andy.   

“Yeah, no shit.”  The idea still seemed to be working its way under the blond buzzcut; might take a while to get there. 

“ _Why_ are you alive?  Richmond saw you die!”  He glanced at Scott, and his face was suddenly very vulnerable.  “We thought you were dead,” he added, in a plaintive tone of voice, as if not quite sure of himself. 

“Andy pretended to shoot me, and I played possum.  Andy got me out.  Why?” he raised his voice to a teasing lilt.  “Did you miss me?”

“Now is not the time, Scott.”  Michael’s eyes went a little unfocussed, as he listened to words only he could hear.  He put finger and thumb to the radio around his neck.  “Zero,” he said.  “I am in contact with Bravo One.” 

Scott chuckled to himself. 

“Uh, yeah.  That’s not going to be a problem,” Michael added.  “He’s, uh, _not_ actually dead.” 

“That’s the best you can come up with?” Scott demanded.  He folded his arms, and waited. 

“Yeah, that’s what I said,” Slowbridge agreed with the voice in his ear.  He rolled his eyes at the sky.  “Roger that.  Bravo Two, over.”   He dropped his hand again to his weapon.  “Scott, you have a lot of explaining to do, mate.” 

“I have a whole heap of new intel, buddy.  Dalton will forgive me for going AWOL a few hours.” 

“He’s changed sides?” Michael asked, nodding in Andy’s direction.

“I have not,” Andy said. 

“He’s working on _another_ side,” Scott explained.

“CIA?” 

“Nope.  There’s a new player in this game, buddy.  The amateurs are getting a shot at the League.”   Scott clapped Michael’s shoulder, and walked past him. 

“You better go, before Toufeeq come to see why I take such a long siesta,” Andy said. 

“Yeah.  You’ll be OK with the loader?”

“Loader-schmoader,” Andy said, and he laughed at his own joke.  “I _know_ loaders.  I blow one up in Cali, once.  But you better stay dead _._ Remember, St Nazaire?”  

“Wilco, Andy.”  He held out his hand.  “ _Adios._ Good luck with your madman.” 

“ _Adios_.  Good luck with yours.” 

 

* * *

 

 

Scott followed Stonebridge like a sheepdog all the way back to the Pajero, but when they got to the car, Stonebridge stopped him. "Nuh-uh-uh,” he said, turning to face Scott and holding out a hand.  “Hold it right there, Scott.”

Scott stopped, one hand already on the passenger door-handle, and looked at him.  “What?” 

“You’re not getting in the front seat,” Stonebridge told him. 

Scott raised his eyebrows, and pointed one finger through the side window.  “Vinyl,” he said.  “They’ll wash off.” 

“I’m not talking about the seats … even though you do stink like a Cairene abattoir…”

“Thanks,” Scott grunted.

“You’re going to get in the back and lie down, so no-one sees you sitting there like Damien McLeod of the Clan McLeod.” 

“Ah.  Yeah.” 

“You’re a dead man, you have to _stay_ dead.”  They had no real way of guessing which cars they might pass which were driven by the enemy.  Scott had been killed at Andy’s hand; for Andy’s sake they could not risk anyone seeing him alive and kicking. 

Scott looked as if that hadn’t occurred to him yet.  “Ho- _kay_ ,” he sighed.  He trudged around to the back of the car, pulled open the door and got in.  He lay down on the floor, curled up in the foetal position between the seats.  “That better?”

“Much better,” Stonebridge agreed.  He took up the blanket that lay in the back of the car – his mind flashed back to the last time he and Scott had used this blanket – and threw it over Scott’s body.  “There.  Now stay there.” 

The blanket-covered bundle sighed theatrically. 

Stonebridge thumped the door closed and went around the front of the car.  He got in, and started the car.  “Take my Glock,” he said, taking it out, and holding it back between the seats.  “If we run into any trouble, you sit up and give ‘em the good news with that, yeah?” 

A hand wearing a Paracord bracelet reached out from under the grey serge and took the Glock from his hand.  The handgun disappeared under the blanket and a moment he heard the sound of Scott popping the magazine, ramming it back in, and then racking the slide.

Stonebridge put the car into gear, and pulled out onto the road.  He drove with his eyes peeled.  They reached the main road, and accelerated to a comfortable cruising speed.  He kept his eyes open, examining all the passing traffic behind the rim of his cap, but none of the cars on the road wore a flashing sign saying Bad Guys, and no-one fired at him.  As they made their way south, he was able to relax. 

“We all thought you were dead,” he said to Scott. 

“Yeah,” the blanket agreed.  “Andy yelled out, _Play dead idiot_ , just before he shot me, so I did.” 

Stonebridge pulled over to the shoulder of the road to let a motorcyclist who couldn’t wait for his own funeral to overtake them.  “How did he know you’d be wearing armour that could stop that?” 

“He didn’t.  It was a gamble.” 

Stonebridge grunted.  “He gambled right.” 

“He’s playing a dangerous game,” the blanket said. 

“We’re _all_ playing a dangerous game,” Stonebridge said. 

He drove in silence for a few minutes. 

“Listen.” The blanket moved; it raised what might have been a head. 

“I’m listening.” 

“I know we ended up with some hard feelings,” Scott said. 

“Yes,” Stonebridge said.  “But I thought I lost you back there.  In hindsight it’s not worth getting angry about.  Just let it go.  It’s over.” 

“Pull over somewhere.  Let me make it up to you.” 

“I don’t think so,” Stonebridge said. 

“Sure we can.  We’ll tell ‘em we got a flat.” 

“I’m not doing that with you again,” Stonebridge said.  Of that he was absolutely certain.  He was not angry with Scott any more; but he was never going to forget.  Loving Scott was easy; being _in love_ with him would be far too painful for both of them. 

“Sure we can.”

“No.  I’m sorry, but no.  I’m glad you’re alive, but I won’t do that again.  Not with you.”

“Why not?” 

“Because you fucked around!” 

Scott pulled the blanket off his own head.  He came out from under the grey serge, blinking.  “Yeah.  But now I know you’ll get upset, so I won’t do it again.” 

“I can’t get over it.” 

“Yeah, you can.  It’s just sex, buddy.  It doesn’t take anything away from what we’ve got going. Come on, pull over.  I c’n do what I did outside Taljaard…”  He shifted up, as if he was going to slither like a lizard between the two front seats. 

Stonebridge raised his voice in the hope of forestalling the slither before it happened.  “I’m not doing it again with you, Scott,” he said.  “I love you.  I thought you felt the same way, but as soon as your back was turned, you jumped on someone else.”   

“I never said I didn’t love you,” Scott insisted.  He set an elbow on the centre console.  “You know I do.  I’d lay my life down for you, in a second. I’d stop a bullet for you.  You’re like one of my brothers to me.”

“But you won’t stop fucking around, is that it?”

“It’s not that I _won’t._   I didn’t think you’d be so upset.”

“Exactly!  You didn’t think!”

“We just got together the day before yesterday.  You can’t expect monogamy after two days.”

“Yes!  _Yes!”_ Stonebridge blew up.  “That’s exactly what I expect!  I can’t fuck and not fall in love, Scott.  That’s just the way I’m made.  I loved Kerry, I loved Kate, I  love you!  I can’t share that!”

 “Well, ok!  I’m sorry!  Let’s try again, all right?  You want monogamy.  Fine.  I’ll do that, if you want it.  From here on out, I’ll only …”

“No.”

“You just said…”

“I don’t want it, if you’re only doing it because I got pissed off.”

“That’s what monogamy _is,_ dickhead!”

“No, it _isn’t_ , Scott, and if you can’t get your fucking head around that, then it’s better I found out the hard way before we went on too long.”

“Listen, I can try.  Now I know what you want, I’ll…”

“What, you’re going to change who you are?  You can’t.  It doesn’t work like that.  You’re not made like that.  That’s how you are.  And I can’t have it any other way.  That’s how _I_ am.  It will never work.  It’s over, Scott.”

“But…”

“It’s over.  I’m sorry.  I can’t share.  I _never_ share.”

He drove in silence. 

After a moment, he became aware that he’d accelerated the car way over the speed limit in his emotional state.  He braked back down to a sane speed again.

Scott went back under the blanket and brooded quietly. 

“I hope you’re not plotting a counter-offensive back there,” Stonebridge said.  “It won’t work.  I’ve had the whole of last night to think about it.  I’m not angry with you any more, but it’s over.”

“Christ,” the blanket said.  “Prick.”

“Fine.  I am a prick.  It was nice while it lasted, and I will _always_ love you, but now it is over.”

 

* * *

 

 

They got all the way back to the Crib without either shooting or shagging each other,  which, as far as Stonebridge was concerned, was as good as it could get.  They didn’t speak to each other, but then again, there was little to say.  He was  not going to change his mind.  The further he drove, the more certain he was that the decision he was making was the right one. 

Scott loved him.  That he knew.  But he also knew that Scott was not _in love_ with him.  Scott did not reciprocate his feelings; _could_ not reciprocate.  There was something missing there.  He did not know exactly how he knew, but he was absolutely certain of it.  And being in love with someone who did not reciprocate would be like smashing his own heart in a door jamb.  In the long term, he would end up jealous and unsatisfied, Scott would end up claustrophobic, and it would all fall apart.  He would lose Scott.

The other thing he was absolutely certain was that he was _not_ prepared to give Scott up.  He did not share, he did not yield, and he was not allowing _anything_ to drive Scott away.  He had lost Scott for a few hours; he was not losing him again.  He knew what he wanted, and he knew what he had to give up to keep what he wanted, and that decision was made. If sex was the price that had to be paid to keep Scott right where he was, Stonebridge was damn well going to pay it.  

Scott did not have a say in that decision.  He might _think_ that he did, but he did _not_.  Stonebridge ground his teeth.   

When they reached the Crib, Scott was greeted with delirious delight.  He was alive, a KIA resurrected, and he waded into his greeting like Father Christmas arriving at a drunken regimental party. 

Richmond hugged him.  Maggie kissed him.  Baxter pounded him on the shoulder and shook his hand over and over again.  Sinclair put him on Crib-Scrub duty for the month.  While Richmond cleaned the ricochet nick that had left him so convincingly blood-smeared, he sat and explained what had happened.  He explained how Andy had recognised him, and how he’d played dead, and how he’d been thrown into the front scoop of a digger-loader and driven out of the lions’ den.   

And then Scott had spotted the picture of himself, still stuck up on the light-table, and recognised it for what it was.  He insisted on drinking a toast to his own demise.  Then he insisted on drinking another in honour of his own resurrection. 

No-one argued; this was something to celebrate.  They’d lost so many, over the last few years, and getting one of their dead back again was a reason to rejoice.

Stonebridge stood back, his arms folded, and listened with satisfaction.  Nobody mentioned how Scott had broken their battle plan by turning left instead of right; but nobody mentioned how Stonebridge himself had disobeyed his orders by going back after him.  All was well, and Scott was alive; nobody, he thought, wanted to spoil their triumph with facts.

Now, Scott was giving his debriefing.  He stood at the head of the light-table, holding court with an empty shot glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other.  

“Camp B is nowhere near here,” he said, pointing to the map with a finger uncurled from the shot glass.  “Andy says we’re way off in the wrong direction.”  He rattled off a set of co-ordinates, and Richmond tapped it into Primary One. 

A moment later the map zoomed in on a patch of greenery just south of the river, and a long way west of where they were at the moment. 

“We’ve been looking in the wrong direction,” Richmond said.  “We were _sure_ Vastrap was the key!”

Scott shook his head.  “Vastrap meant nothing to Andy when I asked him.  He said the Russian plane landed on this salt pan right here,” he tapped the map. 

“It’s certainly flat enough,” Sinclair said. 

“Ilyushin-76’s can land nearly fuckin’ everywhere.  They met it with pick-up trucks, and took the fuel away.  And then someone put a bomb in the plane.” 

“Andy?” 

“He was still on his way from Istanbul when the plane blew up.”  Scott rubbed his jaw.  “Not that he wouldn’t … just that this time he didn’t.”  

“Do you trust this guy, Scott?”  Stonebridge asked.

“Yeah,” Scott said.  He met Stonebridge’s eyes.  “Yeah, I trust this guy.  He knows my shit, and I know his.  Don’t get me wrong: he’s not one of the good guys.  He just thinks Conrad Knox is _wrong_.” 

“He’s working for Ava Knox?” Dalton asked. 

“He says he told her where Camp B is, days ago.  Andy’s Catholic.  He’s been using the Catholic church in Keimoes to get in touch with her, through her adviser Margie.”

“No wonder she’s been trying to get hold of Sergeant Stonebridge,” Richmond said. 

“The missiles are at Camp B?” Dalton asked, glaring at the rooftops in the satellite image as if she could pierce the corrugated sheets with her eyes. 

“They’re there,” Scott agreed.  “They’re fuelled-up, and ready to roll.  He said they’re not loaded up on the trucks yet, but Toufeeq has a mobile crane, and he can get ‘em ready to roll in a couple of hours. It’s taken them all week to refuel the rockets, and they’re going to move them out on Friday morning.”

“So we’ve got that much time to destroy them,” Dalton said.  

“Wait,” Maggie asked.  “Why don’t we wait for the nukes and the missiles to come together?  Why take out the missiles alone?”

“Because we don’t know where the nukes are, yet,” Sinclair said.  “The risk of losing track of the missiles _and_ missing the nukes is just too much.  There’s no room to gamble, with WMDs.”  

“Lose this chance, and Knox keeps the initiative.  Take it, and Knox loses his long range capability.”  Dalton leaned on the light table.  “How many men does Toufeeq have at Camp B?” 

“About seventy.  Pavel Arnisimov is there, too, by the way.  But _not_ ,” he met Stonebridge’s eyes, “Craig Hanson.”

Stonebridge nodded, very slightly, in acknowledgement that Scott had not forgotten Stonebridge’s priorities.

“Seventy of them,” Baxter gloomed.  “And just six of us.  It’s too heavily guarded to attack head-on. And it’s too political to just call in an air strike.” 

“Stop being so Irish,” Scott told him.  “Andy’s got a plan.  It’s time to be sneaky.” 

“Well, then, Mr Scott,” Dalton said.  “You have our full attention.” 

Scott stubbed out his cigarette.  “Andy’s a bomb man.  He knows explosives.  He’s asked Ava to send him all the C4 she could get her hands on out of the Weapons Decommissioning site.  And she did.  It’s all sitting in a trailer, parked out back of the church.”   

“C4?”

 “When all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” Scott grinned.  “Andy’s a bomber.  He’s got a bomb.  Only thing he doesn’t have is a delivery mechanism.  That’s where we come in.”

“We’re the delivery mechanism?”

“Nope,” Scott said, and grinned.  “ _We’re_ the decoy.  Mikey, _you’re_ the resident World War Two junkie… you ever heard of HMS _Campbeltown_?” 

“The St Nazaire raid?” Stonebridge asked, and then did a double take.  “Oh, you have got to be pulling my leg.”  

“What’s the St Nazaire raid?” Maggie asked. 

“It happened in 1942,” Stonebridge explained.  “There was only one dry-dock in France big enough to repair _Tirpitz_ – you’ve heard of _Tirpitz_?  If _Tirpitz_ was damaged, there was only that one dock she could go to. But the dock was too heavily fortified to attack by conventional means. So what the Royal Navy did was build a bomb inside an old destroyer, disguise her as a German, sail her right inside the harbour and accidentally-on-purpose ram the dry-dock’s caisson.”

“Did it work?” Maggie asked.

“The ship blew up, and destroyed the dry-dock’s caisson,” Stonebridge said.  “ _Tirpitz_ stayed out of the Atlantic for the rest of the war.”  

“The _clever_ thing was,” Scott said,  “they stuffed the ship with commandoes, and as soon as the ship hit the dock _they_ all jumped out and ran around, killin’ people and breakin’ things.  The Germans thought the ship was a decoy for the commandoes – except that actually, the _commandoes_ were the decoy, to give the ship a reason for being there.  And the ship was just a delivery mechanism for a really, _really_ big bomb.”

They all considered the idea. 

“This is stupid,” Richmond said. 

“If it’s stupid, but it works, then it isn’t stupid,” Scott said.  “We’re just too outnumbered to run around playing soldiers.  It’s time to get _sneaky_ …”

 

* * *

 

 

Dalton made the call through Skype, answering at last the calls that had been sent to Stonebridge from Cape Town.  She used the Crib to barge through to Ava Knox’s contact list. 

The call was accepted immediately.  A moment later the video screen showed an office, and a woman sitting behind a desk.  “Hello,” she said. 

“Miss Knox.  My name is Major Smith, officer commanding Section Twenty,” Dalton introduced herself. 

“Major _Rachel_ Smith, I presume.”  Ava sat back, and smiled; a cold curve of her lips.  “Yes, my contact in Whitehall has told me about you.”

“Why didn’t you tell us you were acting against your father yourself?”

“I did.  I offered Section Twenty an alliance.  That alliance was turned down.  _Politely,_ ” she said, and smiled coldly, “oh, _so_ very politely; but still quite unmistakably turned down.  Once I knew I would not be joining forces with Section Twenty, I began to look for a way to bring my father down myself.  Surely, you didn’t expect me to do nothing?”

“I didn’t expect you to take a hand in a covert military operation.”

“I can’t think why you wouldn’t.” 

“You’re taking a great deal of risk.”

“Did you forget to look up my biography, Major?  I have been waist deep in African politics ever since I was a little girl pushed forward by my father to give Jonas Savimbi a bunch of flowers and a handshake.  I am in the business of risk, and the Knox Foundation is my life’s work.  I will not allow it to be destroyed for my father’s psychosis.”

“So you started engaging your own fighters,”  Dalton said.  “You’ve had a spy among your father’s men for days.” 

“I find a working command of Portuguese is _such_ a useful thing to have, don’t you?”

“Do you know who he is?”

“I do, and I do not care.  The Knox Foundation will work with _anyone_ , in the pursuit of its aims.  He contacted me, and I knew I could use him.  He has told me everything he knows.  I know more than you do about Nostromo.” 

“But you need soldiers,” Dalton said.  “You don’t have enough – I would know.  You’ve failed to hire sufficient mercenaries to take your father’s camps on your own.”

“Someone has been posting all over the forums, warning mercenaries not to get involved in Cape Town,” Ava agreed.  “Whoever this Shark in the Dark is, he has _serious_ cachet in the underworld.”

“So you have money, and information, but you don’t have boots on the ground.”

“Which is why you and I should work together.  The enemy of my enemy is my friend.  The Knox Foundation is too important to be risked by pride.  I _will_ work with _anyone_ in the pursuit of my goals, Major… including you.” 

 

* * *

 

 

It was time for Stonebridge to go to church: specifically, the Keimoes RC church, where Andy Correia had persuaded Toufeeq he needed to go to ‘make confession.’  The local priest had been talked into delivering messages from him to Ava Knox.  And in return, Ava Knox had sent to the church everything he’d asked for, delving into the nearly bottomless bargain-bin that was the Knox Foundation’s depot in Cape Town. 

Sinclair had expressed a desire to get out from behind his desk, for once; citing boredom with looking at the screens of the Crib for hour after hour.  Dalton gave permission for Stonebridge and Sinclair to take the other SUV, and to tow the trailer of Ava Knox’s donated war materiel back with them.   Stonebridge drove, and Sinclair took the passenger’s seat next to him. 

As they crossed the desert, the landscape changed.  It turned from pancake flat, to scattered with sun-blasted black rocks.  The rocks stood out like weird alien eggs, black and smoothed by time and heat.  It was an inhospitable landscape, parched and hard.

Life out here existed only within a narrow slice of possibility, balanced on a knife-edge carved by thirst.  What life there was here had to be perfect, without waste, and without flaw, in order to keep its balance on that knife-edge. 

Stonebridge liked it.  The emptiness was clean.  A man could clear his head, out here.

They drove steadily west, driving in the opposite direction to Vastrap.  By the afternoon, they reached the irrigated farmland around Keimoes.  They found their way through vineyards and fruit orchards, and through the little town to the church. 

Stonebridge slowed the car to a first-gear prowl, and spoke.  “Here we are, then.”

They rolled past the church.  It stood in its own block of sand behind a chain-link fence, and surrounded by palm trees.  The steeple pressed up directly into the sun, casting only a tiny patch of shade.  Behind it, Stonebridge saw the white block of a small luggage trailer.

“There’s our trailer,” Sinclair said.  “Pull over.” 

Stonebridge steered the car onto the soft sandy shoulder and stopped.  “Are you coming in?” 

“I’m certainly not going to sit here and cook,” Sinclair said.  He opened the door. 

Stonebridge got out.  He put his sunglasses on, and followed Sinclair through the gate of the church.  They crossed the sandy yard to the trailer. 

It was white, with an orange stripe, and stood only as tall as his waist; big enough to carry a family’s luggage, but not much more.  It had two motorcycle-sized tyres, and its towing hitch stood on its own little wheel, like the nose of a miniature aeroplane. 

“Cute,” Stonebridge said.  The trailer’s luggage compartment opened vertically like a suitcase, but its hitches were locked with padlocks. 

“Keys?” Sinclair asked. 

“Scott didn’t say anything about keys,” Stonebridge said. 

“He said Andy and Ava use this place to communicate,” Sinclair said.  “Maybe someone here has the keys for safekeeping.” 

“Only one way to find out.” 

They walked along to the church, and up the small flight of steps to the arched doorway.  The door was unlocked, and Stonebridge held the heavy timber door open to let Sinclair in. 

“Hello,” Sinclair called, into the depths of the church.

The church was empty, its hanging lights turned off.  The inside had been painted white, but the stained glass windows rendered the interior space dim.  Stonebridge closed the door, and followed Sinclair.  The high arched ceiling took up the sound of his boots. 

He hadn’t been in a church since… no, scratch that last, Sergeant.  He _had_ been in a church recently. 

He had been in a church two weeks ago for Kerry’s funeral.  His heart squeezed painfully shut. 

He replaced his internal thoughts with a visual inspection of the church.  This part was called the nave, if he remembered right; that part up there was called the transept.  The pews stretched away across the floor to the altar, strung neatly across the nave like polished pine piano-strings.  He followed Sinclair down the centre aisle, along a stone-flagged floor that had been polished until it shone like fine mahogany. 

“Hello,” Sinclair called again.  “Anyone here?” 

There was the sound of movement, and a man came out of a door at the left of the sanctuary.  He was a middle aged man, with glossy black hair combed horizontally across his brow, and he wore a dark blue shirt with a dog-collar.  “Good afternoon.” 

“Hello,” Sinclair said.  He accelerated his pace up the aisle. 

Stonebridge followed, keeping back, keeping watch.  There were a hundred places for people to hide in here, but as he walked he reassured himself that no armed gunmen lay hidden under the level of each pew.  Unless they were going to spring out from the sanctuary … or were huddled under the little altar…

He reached back, and lifted the back of his T-shirt so that he could get to his Glock in a hurry. 

“Hello,” Sinclair said.  “I’m here on unofficial business.  You’ve got something here for me, from Ava Knox?  My Brazilian friend came here and arranged it.”

“The trailer outside,” the man agreed.  Stonebridge saw a shade of concentration cross his face, from merely welcoming strangers to negotiating with possible allies.  “I’m supposed to keep it here for Ava Knox’s friend.”

“He sent us instead,” Sinclair said.  “Have you got keys for it?”

“I’ve got the keys.  Should I phone the hospital to expect you?” 

Stonebridge had actually opened his mouth to ask, _What hospital?_ before Sinclair forestalled him.  “We already did,” Sinclair said, smoothly.  “They’ll put it to good use, trust me.”

“Good,” the priest said.  “You’re doing the Lord’s work.  Let me fetch the keys?” 

Stonebridge followed him to the door to the side of the transept, suspicious, but the priest only reached up to a board hung with key rings and brought one down.  “These,” he said, and handed the little ring to Stonebridge. 

“Thank you,” he said.  “When you speak to Miss Knox, tell her Mr Byers was here, and we’ll put her gift to good use.” 

They went back outside again. 

“He’s not in on it,” Sinclair said. 

“No,” Stonebridge agreed.  His boots crunched lightly in the gravel as he crossed the church’s yard toward the trailer.  “I wonder what he thinks is in the trailer?”

“Knowing the Knox family’s sense of history and symbolism,” Sinclair said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if… no. I won’t jinx myself by guessing. Let’s see.” 

They reached the trailer again, and Stonebridge unlocked the two padlocks that closed the top hatch of the luggage compartment.  He undogged its clips and lifted the hatch. 

The compartment was packed, almost to the top, with cardboard boxes marked with the red-and-white logo of MSF.  “Anti-malarial tablets?” 

“ _That’ll_ make MSF happy,” Sinclair said.  He picked up one of the boxes.

Stonebridge picked up a box, and turned it over in his hand.  It was heavier than pills had any right to be.  He opened the lid. 

“C4?” Sinclair asked. 

It certainly _looked_ like C4.  It was hard to know why Ava would send them a trailer load of modelling clay.  If this trailer was packed full, then that had to be around – he estimated the size of the trailer in his head – over half a ton?  “Enough C4 to sink more than one _Campbeltown_ ,” Stonebridge said.

Sinclair put his box back into the stack with sudden gentleness.  He reached over to a green plastic box labelled First Aid, and opened that.  “ _And_ detonators,” he said.  “Is Scott sure he knows what to do with this?” 

“He said he and Correia did it together once, and once is enough for him to remember.” 

Sinclair was looking into the trailer’s load with a frown, as if worried that he might set the plastic explosive off just by looking at it.  “Scott and his photographic memory,” Sinclair said.  

“That’s what he says,” Stonebridge admitted. 

“Why would an assassin and a Delta operator be playing with explosives in the first place?”

“Scott mentioned him and Christy Bryant and Correia working together, some time in the past.”  He’d asked Scott about his CIA connection, after Mogadishu, but Scott had made it clear he didn’t want to talk about it.  Whatever Scott had done, he wasn’t proud of it. 

“Why?” Sinclair rubbed at his beard.  “All three of them together?” 

“That’s what I gather.”  He cast his mind back.  “Correia said something about Scott owing him for Ecuador.” 

“Hmm,” Sinclair said.  “You’ve never asked Scott about what he did, after his discharge?”

“Scott doesn’t talk about it, and I don’t ask,” Stonebridge said. 

“He worked with a Medellin bomber and a CIA agent,” Sinclair said.  “Whatever he did, it wasn’t charity work.”

Stonebridge said nothing.  Correia, the bomber.  Christy Bryant, CIA handler.  And between them, Damien Scott; battered, betrayed and angry.  Stonebridge could fill in the dots, suddenly.

He stood in the bright African sun, and his blood ran quite cold in his veins. 

Damien Scott had assassinated people.  No wonder he didn’t want to talk about his CIA connections.

“I don’t know what happened,” Stonebridge said, slowly, choosing his words carefully, “but I think he went off the rails, after his discharge.  He says he got that tattoo, the Shark in the Dark,” he touched his own arm with two fingers, “to remind himself not to go back that way.”

Had Kerry known?  She’d invited him into their home, welcomed him into their lives warmly.  But, _Damien will always be in trouble_ , she had said, as if she knew something Stonebridge didn’t.  And she was right.  Scott would always seek out trouble, because Scott believed he deserved nothing better.

“But you’ve never asked him the details?” Sinclair persisted.  “It’s never been part of your pillow talk?”

 _Pillow talk?_   That was a bit personal.  Then again, he had brought it upon himself by coming out in front of the whole unit.  Michael Stonebridge; class blabbermouth.  Sinclair was probably only the first of many.

He spoke slowly.  “Scott never talks about his past, and I do _not_ ask,” he  said.  “He’s my friend.”

“Your lover,” Sinclair said.

“He _was_ my lover,” Stonebridge admitted.  “We’ve called it off.”

“Really?” Sinclair gave him a penetrating look, his eyes narrowed.

“We have … um, different values,” Stonebridge hedged.  He did not want to discuss his relationship with Scott, any more than he wanted to discuss Scott’s history.  “But … he _is_ still my best friend.  He’s a better man than he realizes he is.  Whatever he did, whatever he has on his conscience, he deserves a second chance.”

“Now _that_ ,” Sinclair nodded, as if coming to a private decision and satisfied with his own thought processes, “is _exactly_ what Eleanor Grant said.  Bring the car around; we’ll have to hitch up the trailer.”   

 

* * *

 

 

The trailer made driving back a little slower, a little more careful than they had driven out.  Sinclair might have mad skills, as far as Scott was concerned, but he didn’t have the Bravos’ cultivated disregard for things that went ka-boom.  Stonebridge was told to please drive at a _rational_ speed, thank you, Sergeant. 

The farmhouse looked just as usual.  He received the standard greeting buzz on his phone, to signal that he’d been observed and recognised by the Crib, and drove around to the back of the building.  The Pajero slid in place behind the building, under the flap of camo-netting that had been strung up between the eaves and the trees.  They got out. 

The air smelled of the trees that the camo was tied to; spicy and dusty.  There was a new car there: a white Volkswagen Kombi, in the old 1970’s mould.  

Dalton and Maggie were there, too, in the back of the truck that had carried the Crib.  Sinclair went over to greet her. 

Stonebridge detoured to take a closer look at their car-bomb, and walked around it.  The streets of South Africa were full of Volkswagen Kombis.  Along with the Toyota Hiace, they were the backbone of the informal public transport system.  According to Andy Correia, the Bad Guys had another Volkswagen, nearly identical to this one.  It would be the perfect bait-and-switch.  Andy would drive out; an hour later, Andy would drive back, with a new cargo and hidden passengers.

He walked around the front of the van, and found Scott and Richmond sitting in the open side door.  Scott was smoking. 

Scott waved the cigarette at Stonebridge.  “You took your time!” he greeted Stonebridge cheerfully.  “We’re all waiting for you.”

“Stop complaining. Father Christmas had a long way to drive,” Stonebridge told him.  “This is our _Campbeltown_?” he asked, nodding at the Volkswagen. 

Scott drew a puff, and waved the cigarette.  “Designated Narsil.” 

“Because it’s going to break into lots of little pieces at the decisive moment,” Richmond said, with a smile.  “We took a vote.”

“Nostril?” Stonebridge said, in disbelief.  “You’re having me on.”

“ _Narsil_ ,” Scott repeated.

“Who the hell is Narsil?”

“Narsil’s not a who, dopehead.  It’s the sword that chopped off Sauron’s finger.” 

 _Dopehead_ …  Stonebridge had never been so glad to be called Dopehead in his life.  He’d wondered how Scott was going to take having his come-on turned down, but it seemed Scott did not resent being sexually rejected.  They were friends again.  It wasn’t perfect, but it was bearable.

“It sounds like a throat sweet,” Stonebridge complained. 

“It’s from a book, Mikey.  Which you would _know_ , if you knew how to read,” Scott said, pointing the cigarette at him between two fingers.  

“I know how to read.” 

“Yeah, lemme rephrase … which you’d know _if_ you ever read anything other than training manuals and Military History Monthly.”  Scott put his cigarette in his mouth and took a drag, his eyes glinting at Stonebridge in challenge.

Richmond added insult to injury by laughing.

“I don’t have time for that silly American stuff, Scott.  That's for little kids.”

He knew he’d said something wrong as soon as the words were out of his mouth.  Both mouths dropped open and both sets of eyes popped open wide. 

“ _Silly?_ ” Scott said, aghast. 

“ _American?_ ” Richmond squealed, as if he’d offered her an insult that could only be repaid in a duel.  "You think Tolkien is American?" 

"Kerry read that stuff when she was fifteen!" Stonebridge defended himself.  "Dragons and Threadfall and all that nonsense.  It _is_ kids' stuff!"

Both of his tormentors launched themselves out of the doorway of the Volkswagen. Scott got around the front of the van first.  “Major Sinclair, _sir!”_ he barked, snapping to attention.  “Permission to shoot the Marine now, _sir!_ ”

“Why?”  Sinclair’s voice asked, from beyond Stonebridge’s line of sight.

“He says Lord of the Rings is silly American kids’ stuff,” Richmond explained, following Scott. 

A moment later, there was the sound of footsteps around the front of the Volkswagen, and Maggie appeared. She looked dishevelled and distressed. Stonebridge thought for a moment that her ire was in response to his comment; then he realized her agitation was directed at Scott.

“How can you even _say_ that?” her voice rang out.

Scott pulled up, surprised.  “It’s just a joke, Maggie.” 

“It’s just a joke,” Stonebridge reassured her.  “He wouldn’t shoot me.  _I’d_ shoot _him_ first.”

“It’s not funny!” she cried.  “We all thought you were dead!”

“Yeah, but I’m not dead!  You’re with me on this, Mikey – I’m not dead, am I?”

“You are dis _gust_ ingly alive,” Stonebridge agreed. 

“See?  I’m not dead, so it doesn’t matter.  We can’t get all hung up on it now that it _hasn’t_ happened.  Getting shot at is part of the job.” 

“It’s the _point_ of the job,” Stonebridge agreed.  

"We have to laugh about the job," Scott said.  "Most of the job is bullshit.  If we _didn't_ laugh about the bullshit, we'd all sit around going _holy fuck what are we doing here_ all day long."

“They’ve already shot _each other_ ,” Richmond put in.  “When we got the new body armour, Scott showed it to Michael, and they took turns shooting each other and going _Woooo yeahhhh_.  Don’t worry, Maggie – it's not you, _they’re_ both mental.”

Dalton arrived around the front of the van, breaking up the argument instantly.  “You two can shoot each other on your own time!” she snapped.  “We have a deadline to meet.”

 

* * *

 

 

By sundown, the seats of Narsil had been stripped of stuffing.  The floorboards had been lifted and blocks of C4 had been laid down instead, and the seats had been stripped of their stuffing and refilled with more C4 and every piece of scrap metal Section Twenty had.  Naamloseput Farm’s ancient wind-pump still stood, but it had been ransacked so much that the first good storm would blow it down.  The sides of the seats and the doors had been studded with shrapnel, designed to flay out in a spray of steel.  Narsil would go off like a claymore, aiming its explosion to the side, sending a spray of hot metal tearing into the flanks of Toufeeq’s missiles where they stood. 

The last job would be the detonator. 

C4 did not explode if it was bumped, or burned, or if a bullet arrived in it.  It reacted sympathetically to an explosion inside it, which was the task of the detonators that had been squeezed into the putty-like blocks.  It would be a timed delay, set for five minutes after Narsil’s ignition was turned off.

Scott was left alone that evening, leaning into the engine compartment of the Volkswagen, finishing the wiring of the detonator.  It was a fiddly, patient, time-consuming task, and he had to cross reference Narsil with his memories of doing this same task with Randy Andy.  He would have to re-wire the van’s starter motor, and link it to the detonators.  He would have to get the timing just right – or Narsil would do what the real _Campbeltown_ did, and go off late.  Just in case, he would include a back-up detonation signal. 

Fiddly, patient, time-consuming; and he’d used his usual excuse to get people to leave him alone.  “Having a photographic memory and trying to remember all this shit’s really fucking hard with all you people talking!” he’d complained.  “Go away!” 

They’d left him alone with Narsil, and with his memories.  Memories of this connection; that fuse; this wire.  His memories were as clear as crystal, even though it had been many years since he had made up his first car bomb. 

Unfortunately, he could not turn off his memory, and other memories were hitchhiking into his mind.  Memories of himself and Randy Andy were bubbling back along with his memories of wires and circuits.  Memories of Quito; memories of before Quito; after Quito.  The night when Andy had walked into the room, to catch Scott with his 1911 pressed under his chin.  Andy had saved his life, after Quito; not by taking the gun away, but by telling him what to do instead.  “ _You owe her nothing!_ ” Andy had said to him.  “ _Walk away!_ ” 

Thinking about that was not going to help him build Narsil. He had a job to do; _fiddly, patient, time-consuming,_ he reminded himself. 

He heard a footstep come around the corner of the house, and the memory of Andy’s voice in his ear dissipated.  He turned around to see Baxter walking towards him balancing a mug in one hand.  “Coffee?” he asked. 

“Tea,”  Baxter said.  “Your fancy rooibos stuff.”

“Great,” Scott said.  “Put it there.”  He pointed, and went back to his job in the guts of Narsil. 

“Are you going to finish in time?” Baxter asked, setting the mug down carefully.

“Yup.  Nearly done.” 

“You realize that when we fly home we’re going to have the undivided love of every bomb dog in the Southern Hemisphere, with that all over us?”

“Eh- _yup_. I know _that_.”  Scott did not look up. 

“We’ll have to bypass airport security.”

“Or…,” Scott suggested, “just stick around until the scent wears off?  Pass the soldering iron?”

Baxter picked it up, and handed it over.  Scott took it out of his hand, turning it carefully so as not to let the glowing tip touch his wrists, and lowered it into the engine compartment. 

“Solder?” he asked. 

Baxter passed that over too.  A moment later, the soldering iron hissed as Scott pressed it over the tip of the solder.  The wire was secure.  “Right, that’s that.  Mobile phone?”  he asked, holding the soldering iron out. 

“You’re sure you know what you’re doing?”  Baxter asked.  He handed over the phone, and took the soldering iron in its place.  He put the soldering iron down, balancing it across a stick with its hot tip pointing up.   “It’s going to be a pretty big bomb.” 

“I know what I’m doing, buddy.”  Scott began opening the phone, and stripping out the parts he needed. 

Baxter fell quiet.  There wasn’t much shouty-ness to him.  Quiet voice; quiet eyes; quiet movements.  He had the training of an elite soldier, but the careful predatory movements of a leopard.  He was restful to the point of dullness, compared to Mikey’s tightly-wound intensity

Baxter cleared his throat.  “So.  You and Michael.  You’re an Item?”

Scott raised his head, and narrowed his eyes.  “How the hell do you know about that?”

“Everybody knows.  When he went back to fetch you, he came out to the whole Crib.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Dalton ordered him not to go.  He walked out anyway.  That’s what happens when you order one queer to fuck another, he said.  At the top of his lungs, too.  And then he stormed out.” 

“Jesus Christ.”  Scott put down the gutted phone, so as not to make a mistake.  Emotion and explosives did not mix. 

"That man knows how to come out in style." 

Michael Stonebridge had just had his own Stonewall moment?  This was a guy whose idea of rebellion was to join the wrong branch of the Royal Navy … and he’d gone from first kiss to coming out at work in the course of a couple of _days?_    Scott didn't know whether to be proud or appalled. 

“Fuckin’ hell!  He doesn’t do things by halves, does he?”

“You and Michael are a couple?”

Had been a couple.  Might be a couple again some time.  Michael might say it was ‘over,’ in that Law And Order tone of voice, but Scott didn’t believe it.  Michael wasn’t a man who gave up on what he wanted – _no-one_ who passed SAS selection was a quitter. 

Scott shrugged.  “If he’s out, he’s out.”  And when he’d come out, he’d come out for Scott as well.  Scott should have been pissed, but he found he didn’t actually care.  “You got a problem with that, you can go fuck yourself.”  He picked up the soldering iron.  

“I’m not buying it.”

“ _You_ don’t have to buy fuck-all.  It’s none of your business.”

“It _is_ my business.”

“Oh yeah?”  Scott demanded.  The best defence was always an offence.  “What about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell?  It’s got nothing to do with you.” 

“It _is_ my business.  Up until last week I’d have sworn on TE Laurence’s grave there was only _one_ queer in Section Twenty.  And now there are two – _maybe_.”   

“Me and Mikey.  So deal with it.”

“I’ll agree with you as far as Michael goes.  I _wondered_ about him the day I met him.”

“Huh,” Scott grunted.  Someone else who agreed with him that Mikey was just too pretty to be straight.  

“But _you_ …  I _know_ what a gay man trying to pass for straight looks like.  And no matter what Michael says, _you_ just don’t make _any_ blips on my gay-dar.”

“ _Your_ gay-dar…?”

“I am gay.”

Leopards – one of the most unpredictable cats.  They moved so secretly no-one knew they were even there …  Scott found himself looking into Baxter’s deep blue eyes. 

“Shit,” Scott said.  "Oh, shit." 

“Here I am; living breathing arse-kicking proof that fags can fight.  I am a genuine gay soldier in British Special Forces, and _not_ …” Baxter’s eyes seemed to darken with anger, “And _not_ whatever weird game _you’ve_ been playing.  I am so not impressed.” 

Scott put the soldering iron down, carefully.  “It’s not a game,” he admitted.  

“There’s no-one in Section Twenty who’s not absolutely _convinced_ that you’re queer,” Baxter said.  “But I don’t believe it for a second.  What I can’t figure out is _why_. What’s the point?”     

“For Mikey.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“What more does there _need_ to be, for fuck’s sake?  I owe Mikey, more than he’s ever going to understand.” 

Baxter’s baby-blue eyes _blinked-blinked_.  “There’s a big difference between owing someone and sleeping with them!”

 _“Why?_ I’d lay my life down for Mikey in a heartbeat.  Why is it different to lie down _with_ him instead?”

“Most people would say it’s pretty damn different!”

“I’m not wired like _most_ people.  Sex is nothing.  I thought sex would help him, so I gave it to him.  It was easy.  The spirit was willing, and the body did what bodies do.”

“Jesus Christ,” Baxter said, in a rising pitch, as if he only _now_ really understood what he had just guessed at before.  

"I love Michael Stonebridge," Scott said.  "I _love_ him!  Don't you understand?"

"You just said..."

"Mikey gave me back my whole life!  I was dirt when I met him!  But one day in Kuala Lumpur, I looked up from hell, and there he was.  And he's changed my life!  And I love him for it.  I would lay my life down for him – I’d stop a bullet for him –  in a heartbeat, to save him.  Do you think I would stop at giving him my body?  There _is nothing_ I would not give him.  I _love him,_ do you understand?" 

“The whole unit thinks you’re gay!”

Scott shrugged it off.  “Since when do I give a fuck what other people think?  It’s not about me.  Mikey needed it.  I could give it to him, so I did.  It was my call, and I _always_ make my own decisions.”

Michael had believed him about the dope in his locker, straight off the bat, no questions asked.  No-one else had believed him, other than his mother; not his CO, none of his Delta buddies, not even his own defence lawyer. 

Michael had given him room in his life and made him welcome; gave him a second chance; trusted him beyond reason.  Michael had called for him, instinctively, when he’d needed help the most.  He would die for Mikey, and he knew only one way to express that love so Mikey would understand. 

"I think I'm wired up differently to most guys," Scott said.  "Sex just isn't anything to me.  I've sold my body before for money.  And to keep myself safe in prison.  Men will pay for what I've got.  I figured that out when I was about sixteen.  But love ... love is different.  Love is worth fighting for.   I could give _him_ my body for years and years, and I wouldn't mind.  I think I'd be happy, if it makes _him_ happy."   

"Jesus Christ," Baxter said. 

“Listen,” Scott said, urgently.  “Sex doesn't mean anything to me, but it means a _shit-load_ to him.  Not a word, not a sign, not a _peep_ that it was anything other than what he thinks it was.  He just wouldn’t get it."

"He's upset.  We all saw how he carried on."

"He'll move on.”

“Will he?”

“Yeah.  Mikey's got a knight-in-shining-armour complex.  He won't come back to me, but he’ll find himself someone else.” 

“Male or female?” 

“We’ll have to wait and see,” Scott said.  “But Mikey’s going to be okay.  That’s all that matters to me.”

  


	3. Chapter 3

## Wednesday night,

## Northern Cape

At eight o’clock, they received Andy Correia’s signal.  It was a text message, sent to Scott. 

FORGIV ME FATHR 4 I HAV SINND.  PLZ CAN I COME C U 4 CONFSSN? 

Andy was on his way, and he had the Volkswagen with him, and he would meet them at the first of the three agreed-upon RVs. 

Scott replied with another text.  Antonio was more than welcome to come to him, my son, he would be at the church, they could talk about what was clearly still troubling his conscience. 

 

* * *

 

Scott waited in the dark just inside the bus shelter.  He crouched on one knee, closed up against the cobwebbed side panel of the shelter, his M4A1 held ready. 

The road was deserted, and dark; mainly because they’d shot out the nearest street light.  The nearest buildings were on the other side of a field; a dark line, pipped with lit windows.  Narsil was parked just a few yards away. 

“ _Here we go_ ,” Richmond announced in Scott’s ear-piece, from the darkness on the other side of the road.   “ _Right on time_.” 

Scott shifted his head, craning around the corrugated steel panel, so that one eye could take a peek down the street.  The lights of the other Volkswagen looked like bright eyes coming up the road. 

“I see ‘em,” he confirmed.

The lights seemed to flash at him, as the car changed its bearing toward him.   They were too bright, threatening his night vision, and he ducked back behind the corrugated steel.  A moment later, the lights stroked around the inside of the bus shelter, his shadow passing around him like a spooky stage effect.  Then they dimmed, as the van rolled slowly to the shoulder just beyond his position.  The engine was old and fucked: its noise was a long flat fart.

“ _He’s stopping_ ,” Michael murmured from behind the bus shelter. 

“ _Make this quick and quiet, people_ ,” Dalton said, her voice cool and determined.

The other van was rolling slowly to a stop, its tyres rasping on the road shoulder.  The hand-brake was pulled up with a loud _hoick_ that would have attracted the outrage of any DI in the US Army.

A moment later the driver’s side door opened.  “I tell you, engine is _wrong_.”  The voice was Andy Correia’s. 

The passenger’s door popped open like a beetle’s wing.  The passenger jumped out onto the ground, and the door clunked shut behind him.

“Engine sounds fine to me,” he complained.

“Is the gasket.” Andy emerged around the back of the van.  “I will call for a tow.” 

“It’s not the fucking gasket,” the passenger said, irritably.  He walked to the back of the van, where the Volkswagen Kombi carried its engine.  “I know what a blown gasket sounds like.”

“Gasket _going_ to blow.” 

“Maybe there’s a buggered spark plug in there.  Bring me a light, I’ll have a look-see.” 

Andy was still walking, carrying on away from the van without slowing down.  He saw Scott hiding in the shadows as he came abreast of the bus shelter.  His teeth glinted in the starlight, but he didn’t break his stride.  He walked all the way past the bus shelter, before his passenger noticed that he was going.  

“Hey, where are you going?”  the passenger called, irritated, spinning on his heel.  “Come over here and – _Fuck!_ ”

“ _Hey,_ there,” Baxter announced.  “Show’s over.”

Scott couldn’t see Baxter, but he saw the passenger see him instead. 

The man jinked sideways, rapid footwork carrying him away from Baxter.  “Fuck!” he barked, and made as if to jump away around the van. 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Michael urged.  The foresight of his Sig-Sauer appeared around the metal edge of the bus shelter, followed by his corded fore-arms.  Scott held the M4, ready to come out and take cards in the game if Michael and Baxter couldn’t do this with handguns. 

“Hands up, hands up!”  Baxter yelled, his voice rising.

The contact didn’t stop moving.  “Fuck!”  He was still going.  He was going to sprint into the dark across the road. 

He didn’t get very far.  Scott lunged out of cover with the M4 lined, but he didn’t need to squeeze the trigger.  The passenger was going away from Michael and Baxter, sprinting across the street, but he was running straight into the sight picture of Dalton’s Vektor. 

The Vektor was suppressed, but it still made a loud _Clack! Clack!_ The sound echoed back from the night.  

The man tumbled down.  Dalton's brass tinkled on the tar. 

Dalton trotted out of the dark.  Scott saw her kick the side-arm away, just in case, but Andy’s passenger  wasn’t getting up.  Dalton’s face was grim, even under her face-paint. Better for the man to die, than risk him getting away and giving the warning to Camp B.   

Andy popped out from behind the bus shelter.  “Scott!” he greeted, cheerfully.

“Sh-Sh-Sh-!”  Scott hushed him, quickly, waving his voice down with one hand. 

Around him, Section Twenty was frozen in position, listening.  They listened to see if anyone had heard the sharp crack of the suppressed gun, and recognised the sound for what it was.  Michael was staring straight up into the Milky Way, as if he was listening directly to the stars.  His upturned eyes were startlingly white against the darkness of his face-paint.   

No dogs barked.  No lights turned on.  No voices called.  No lights over there in the houses suddenly went _off,_ either, as canny civilians flipped off their light switches and dived for the safety of the floor.  The night ticked on around them.  Far above, the Milky Way was a pristine reef of stars, and the night critters went on singing.

They’d gotten away with it.

“Awesome,” Scott whispered, after a moment.  “Yo, Andy.” 

“Scott, my friend,” Andy said, in Spanish.  Andy didn’t seem worried about the death of his passenger.  Then again, Andy had seen a lot of people killed in his career.  His Medellin ex-bosses weren’t exactly known for offering their people great perks and job security.  “That’s the bomb?” he asked, nodding toward Narsil where it waited in the dark.

“In English, buddy,” Scott said.  “So we can all follow.”

“That is our bomb?” Andy repeated, in English.  “You made it like St Nazaire?” 

“Yeah,” Scott said.  “Five minute fuse, like you said.  Andy, I’d like you to meet Baxter, and you’ve met Mikey.  Sniper out there’s Richmond, and this here’s the boss, Lady M– uh, _Major_ Dalton.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Dalton held out one hand, and Andy shook it.  All polite, but Scott could see that the two of them were sizing each other up; military intelligence meeting organised crime, and neither one fully happy about it.    

“We don’t have time to socialise,” Dalton said briskly, and moved away.  “Zero, we have acquired the target.  Stonebridge, decals and number plates.  Julia, come in from the dark…”

“Wilco,” Michael murmured.  He moved past Scott into the bus shelter, and took out the duffel-bag with their tools. 

“I’m on the rust job.”  Baxter was already moving to Narsil, and bending down with a paintbrush and can.  Richmond appeared out of the dark, her SVD Dragunov in her hands. 

Scott ignored the rest of Dalton’s conversation with Zero.  “You’re still good to drive us in?” he checked. 

“ _Si_ ,” Andy agreed.  “And you?” 

“We’re going to get in, and hunker down.  Now, you know what you gotta do?  Drive in, all cosy.  Get us in range of the missiles, and then when the shooting starts, you bail.  You get out while we’re still rolling, and you _run._   You got that?”

“I got it.” 

“This ain’t your fight,” Scott said.  “You get us in there, that’s enough.”  He reached into his top pocket, and pulled out the mobile phone.  “Here.  Fail-safe.  Number’s programmed in.” 

“If you doing your job properly, I will not needing it,” Andy said, his grammar belying his calm face.  He had a habit of losing track of English tenses when he was worried.  He put the phone into his pocket anyway, and gave it a pat to make sure it sat snugly and safely.  He grinned at Scott, his teeth flashing in the dark. 

Michael was rearranging the front dashboard of Narsil with reference to the original, making sure windshield wipers and dashboard looked as close as they could.  Baxter was dabbling painted rust spots under the front window.  It didn’t need to be foolproof; not in the dark.  An old Volkswagen Kombi with a Brazilian driver had left Camp B; the sentries would be expecting to see an old Volkswagen Kombi with a Brazilian driver come back.  Dalton was walking around the Volkswagen, sweeping her magic black box over it in case it carried a tracker, but nothing beeped.  “It’s clean.  Come on, let’s get going!”

“Scott,” Richmond said.  “Help me shift him!” 

“Yo,” Scott agreed. He gave Andy a pat on one shoulder, and moved to help her.  He reached under the still warm shoulders of Andy’s passenger, and dragged him off the side of the road.  He manhandled the corpse off the road, behind the bus shelter and into a clump of something thorny.  He would come as a real nasty shock to some commuter in the morning, if Section Twenty didn’t get around to retrieving him and the original Volkswagen. 

Scott made sure the corpse wasn’t visible from the road.  By the time he got back around the bus shelter, Narsil’s engine was running, and its round googly-eye lights were aiming down the road.  “Come on, Scott!” he heard Michael blare at him.  “Get a move on, we don’t have all night!”

“Fucking nitpicking Englishmen…”  Scott accelerated to a jog. 

He was the last man in.  The sliding door was still open, and he got in and rammed the door closed.  As soon as the door clunked shut and the locking bar was yanked down, he felt Narsil lurch under him.  They were off. 

“All aboard,” Andy joked, and then laughed hoarsely at his own joke.  He fished at the long floor gear-stick, waving it around until he found second gear.  Scott could see him silhouetted against Narsil’s dashboard display, the lights glowing over his face and arms.

The first half of the operation was behind them. The _easy_ part was done. 

The rest of the team were all lying on the floor, scrunched up below the level of the windows.  Richmond and Dalton lay head to foot between the rear seats, and Baxter had volunteered for tail-gunner and lay curled up in the cat-box on top of the spare wheel. 

Scott got down on hands and knees, and lay down on the floor in the dark.  Andy crunched his way through Narsil’s awful walking-stick gears, and they gathered speed.

“Zero,” Dalton said, from behind Scott’s head somewhere.  “Be advised, we are on the move.” 

“ _Roger that_ ,” Sinclair said, in Scott’s ear.  “ _We have you on overwatch.  Camp B is a Go. I say again, Camp B is Go._ ”

Michael alone was still sitting up.  He slid one of Narsil’s windows open, so that he wouldn’t have to shoot out the glass if he had to open fire early.  Then he got down on the floor as well, feeling his way down to lie in the same narrow foot-well as Scott.   

Scott was kicked sharply on the hip, and then the elbow.  A moment later a pair of boots came up near Scott’s face, and a pair of knees was pressed awkwardly against his stomach.  He was awkwardly scrunched up between the metal legs of the seats, and he could feel his equipment digging into him, and now he was sharing the space with Mr Universe. 

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” Scott vented.  “Did you _have_ to go and grow such big feet?” 

“It would be easier if _you_ weren’t so fat,” Michael complained. 

“ _I’m_ not the one who’s built like a brick shit-house!” 

He and Michael lay head to foot.  Not a great idea, in hindsight.  Narsil was just too narrow for two six-foot adult men armed with combat rifles and body armour to lie head-to-toe comfortably.  He should have asked to lie down with Richmond. 

Then again, knowing his luck, he’d probably end up lying down with Lady Macbeth, and _Mikey_ would end up snuggled in with the best boobs in the unit…  

“Fuck.  This is not gonna work,” Scott grunted.  “Mikey, move this leg.”  He clapped the top of the nearest calf with his hand.  Michael moved that leg, raising it.  Scott wriggled over onto his shoulder.  “Right, lower it again.”  He took the knee, and pulled it into position.  “That’s better.” 

He was facing the front of the van, and he had Michael’s upper knee resting comfortably against his side, now, instead of digging into him.  He lowered his own arm over Mikey’s other leg, holding it in position.  He was more or less lying between Mikey’s legs, but that was better than knees in his gut. 

Michael moved against him.  Scott felt Michael’s hand close on his right boot, and manhandle it over to where Michael wanted it.  He obligingly bent his knee.  A moment later, Michael picked up his left boot as well.  His right leg was bent over Michael’s body, but his left leg was almost under him.  Now Michael was lying between his legs, as if he was using one leg as a hot-water-bottle and the other as a blanket.   

“There,” Michael growled.  “Good dog.  Now _stay._ ” 

“Hneh,” Scott grunted.  “Just don’t fucking kick me.” 

They subsided into silence.

He could feel Michael’s body heat.  His hand was loosely curled over Michael’s thigh, where it came up across his flank.  His fingers could feel rough khaki fabric, and the hard sheet of muscle underneath.

 Just a few days ago, he would have explored further along that thigh, just to see how far Michael would let him go.  Not tonight.  Michael’s hand was holding his ankle, but that hand wasn’t exploring.  Michael was lying perfectly still; perfectly inert. 

Maybe Michael was restraining himself, holding away an erection with thoughts of his grandmother, or whatever.  But if he was, he was doing a real good job of it.  They were curled up like pretzels, as intimately as two soldiers could get, but the intimacy was no longer sexual.  Mikey _could_ have explored – he was close enough for a grope – but he wasn’t. 

Whatever they had had before, Michael was now really, _truly,_ over it. 

The realization caused something to turn over inside his chest. 

 _One_ mistake on Scott’s part, and Michael had brought the relationship to a short, sharp end.  No second chances; no more sex; it was over.  Michael had made up his mind, and if there was anything he knew about Michael’s mind, it was that he didn’t change it easily. 

On the other hand, it was also worrying.  He’d been loved with terrifying intensity, and then he’d been dropped. 

But _that_ … that just didn’t match with what he knew about Michael Stonebridge.  _This_ was the guy who’d walked in on Scott chatting with his wife, and felt the need to grab him by the throat and bash him against a wall a few times, just to let Scott know where the limits of his comfort zone were.  _This_ was the guy who’d got into the habit of putting electronic trackers on his mistress, for fuck’s sake!  This was a guy who’d sat outside Kerry’s house for three weeks in the school holidays until she’d agreed to date him.  Seventeen-year-old Kerry thought it was romantic; her parents thought it was appalling, and to be honest, thirty-six-year-old Scott kinda agreed with the parents.

This was Mister Jealous.  Mister I-Do-Not-Share.  This was _not_ a guy who should have shrugged his shoulders and said _C’est la vie_.  

There was _something_ going on in that head.  Mikey had brooded like a Gothic hero all afternoon. He was planning _something_.  Scott didn’t know what it was, for once, and the not-knowing was starting to get on his nerves.  He didn’t know what Michael was thinking, and it _frightened_ him. 

At the same time… Scott sighed to himself, in the dark.  At the same time, he admitted, what he felt the most was _relief._

It was over.  He didn’t need to pretend to be something he wasn’t. 

 _This_ was supposed to be Michael’s pressure valve.  No more; no less.  He loved Michael; it was easy to decide to go to bed with the man for a few weeks.  It was easy to just close his eyes, and put his conscious mind away somewhere deep inside.  It had become a challenge for Scott, testing his sexual limits, seeing how far he could go before his _Nuh-uh_ reflex kicked in.  Sex meant nothing.  It was an easy gift to give. 

But he hadn’t thought for a second that Michael might expect him to _keep on_ giving  it!  It was easy – in the short term.  It was easy to pretend a lust he didn’t feel if he only had to keep it up for a few weeks. 

But to maintain that pretence for months on end without him noticing? … impossible.  Michael was innocent, not blind.  He would notice that Scott had to psych himself up to get hard.  He would notice that it took him a moment or so sometimes to start kissing back.  He would notice that Scott only fucked him with his eyes closed. 

Michael would see through the pretence. 

And what would Scott say _then?_   There was no easy answer to that.

He hadn’t meant to pretend forever, but Michael had built more out of the pretence that Scott had intended.  It had been a gift, but Michael had leaped into it as if it was something he had secretly _wanted_ to do all his life.  Scott had joked that Michael was so deep in the closet he shat old shoes, but he hadn’t thought it through.  Michael _had_ been wanting this, he had been _denying_ himself this, all his life, and now that he _was_ out he was making up for lost time.  Sex wasn’t meaningless, for Michael; romance was _serious business_.  Michael had taken to the pressure valve as if sex once meant sex forever.  In the face of that intensity, Scott did not know how to _stop_ pretending. 

Getting trapped in a long-term relationship was _not_ what Scott wanted.  Never again!  The only way of keeping control was if he ensured that it meant nothing, but Michael was _forcing_ it to mean something.  He’d bitten off more than he could chew; Michael was too much for him to handle.  The idea of playing Bella to Mikey’s Edward had suddenly become _terrifying._  

But Michael had come out in front of the whole unit, for _him_.  That was _huge!_   Coming out was a big deal!  It took some people _years_ to get to that point, but Mikey had covered it in a couple of days, and all because of Scott!  How could Scott turn around and throw _that_ away?  How could he leave Mikey alone to face the repercussions of his announcement by himself?  The whole of Hereford was going to find out about it, sooner or later, and Scott would have to stand by his side, because Mikey had come out for _him._  

But how could he go on pretending to be someone he was not?  _Never_ to drop the pretence?  Never to touch a woman again – _ever?_  

But how could he _stop,_ without breaking Michael’s heart? 

Scott had begun to feel the noose of his own lies tightening around his neck.  He’d finally fucked himself into a corner he couldn’t get out of; he’d jumped into the sack and now he couldn’t easily jump out again.

And then, just at the moment when he was starting to worry – Michael set him free.

_“…I will always love you, but now it is over.”_

Now that it was over, he realized how badly he wanted his best friend back.  Fucking Michael Stonebridge had been a mistake.  Michael had been the one pure, undiluted, _unpoisoned_ thing in his life, and he’d fucked that up like he’d fucked up everything else, from his marriage to his career.  He had thought he could fuck and stay friends, but it wasn’t going to work. 

He had what he wanted, and he didn’t want it any more.  He’d accomplished what he’d set out to achieve, and it was costing too much.  The dread of loss and loneliness lay like a cold jelly deep inside his stomach.  Michael was irreplaceable, and he was terrified that he had lost him.  Whatever Michael was thinking over there, pressed against Scott’s legs like a warm hound, it couldn’t be worse than what Scott was thinking now.

Maybe it could still be fixed.  Maybe they could go back to being best-friends, soldiers, brothers.  Maybe they could put the sex and the challenge and the wall of lies out of the way, and close the book, and go on.  He didn’t know how, but he would try. 

 _Dear God_ , he thought, _whatever it takes_.  Whatever Michael was thinking, over there in the dark, Scott would deal with it.  Scott would hang on to his best friend, any way he could. 

 

* * *

 

Sinclair watched the screens, and Maggie watched him. 

She bit at her nails, stressed. 

Before she’d seen them all off yesterday, she’d thought that they were invulnerable, that no force could stop such impressively fearless soldiers. 

Now, she’d seen one of _hers_ die on that screen.  Sure, he’d come back; resurrected himself with his usual pizzazz; popped back to life like an inflatable bop-bag.  But for those few hours, he’d been _dead_.  He was Schrödinger’s merc, now.  He’d come out of the box alive, this time, but she could never feel certain of what was inside that box again. 

Sinclair zoomed out of the bird’s eye view of the Volkswagen lumbering along the road.  He roamed the view back to Camp B.

It was _big_.  Big enough that they would have found it, if they weren’t paying such close attention to the landscape to the east of Upington.  Taljaard and Paradise Lodge, Arnisimov’s decoy phone call, even her own suspicion about Vastrap – it had all kept them looking east, in the wrong direction. 

Camp B was downriver, well to the west of Upington.  It had been a large farm, once.  It was no longer in operation, but it was _anything_ but abandoned.  The grounds were alive with foreshortened figures, moving around.  The perimeter was being patrolled at intervals.

“They’re moving around,” she said to Sinclair.

“They’re walking,” Sinclair said.  “Walking is good.  They’re not stressed, and they’re not standing by for an assault.”

He sounded as if he knew what he was talking about.  Then again, he had been arrested in Khartoum with pretty much the same calm manners.  Damien admired this man, and she knew enough about Damien’s standards to know that meant Sinclair was probably not a man to mess with. 

She looked back at the screen again. 

The farmhouse was surrounded by lawns, and the lawns were covered with large ten-man tents and fat caterpillar shapes Sinclair had interpreted as nissen huts.  There were trucks, and cars, and Sinclair had pointed out to her what he said were 50-calibre heavy machine guns mounted on the beds of pick-up trucks.  ‘Technicals,’ he called them.

Heavy machine guns, intended to keep Section Twenty _out,_ aimed at _her_ team with the intention of killing them for real.  The technicals were parked so as to protect the building at the centre of the farm.  It was a long, tall barn-like building with a stepped roof.  That indicated a large open area inside that needed natural light, Sinclair said.  If the missiles were _anywhere_ , anywhere in the Northern Cape, anywhere in the whole Kalahari, they would be _there,_ under that roof.  Protected by technicals and sentries and tents full of armed mercenaries. 

Assaulting _that_ head-on would be suicide.  But that was where Section Twenty was planning to go. 

She found a half-mended hangnail with her teeth, and began to bite on it. 

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t comfortable driving lying down on the floor of a van.  Stonebridge could feel Scott’s warm weight against his legs; a very intimate way to ride into war.  It would have been horribly awkward, if he had been this close to anyone other than an ex-lover. 

Narsil grumbled its way through the dark.  The Volkswagen was driving heavy, with the weight of half a ton of C4, five soldiers and all their kit inside it.  The windows were well above them, so that they lay in darkness. 

Stonebridge tried not to think about that C4.  He was surrounded by C4 like a sausage in an explosive hot-dog, and if that wasn’t enough, he had his face right next to Scott’s grubby hiking boot.  He could smell his own face-paint, and Scott’s sweaty ankle-sock.  He tried to think of something else, but his mind yawed between those two unpleasant extremes. 

Sock…  Bomb…  Sock…  Bomb…

He was going into combat lying inside a bomb.  For the first time in a long, _long_ while, he realized that he was afraid.

Bomb… Sock… Bomb…

_Please God, let Andy not try any hand-brake turns, or drifts.  Please, let there be no large-ish potholes…_

He had not felt afraid for himself in weeks.  He had thought about shooting himself, but now, _now_ that he was going into a fight in which he might die whether he wanted to or not, he found that he really wasn’t ready to die after all. 

He lay close to the warm bulk of his ex-lover; sweaty socks and all.  Kerry had loved him.  Kate had loved him.  Scott loved him; as much as Scott was able to love.  Something inside Scott was missing, irreparably broken, but he knew that Scott loved him as deeply as he was able to love anyone.  His heart ached, but he wasn’t ready to give up his memories.  Pain was better than grief; but grief was better than not remembering at all.  He had been loved.  He was not ready to die.

There was too much in his life that was worth holding onto.  He didn’t want to let go, but he might not have a choice.

They were driving into battle inside a bomb, and there were just too many things that could go wrong.  No plan survives contact with the enemy, and this one was a _stupid_ plan.  There were too many variables; too many things that had to happen just right for this plan to work.  Scott had let his own cleverness go to his head this time. 

 _If it’s stupid, but it works, then it isn’t stupid._ In World War 2, they used inflatable tanks. In World War 1, they used a sail-powered warship.  In Napoleon’s time, a pair of commanders lied their way across a vital bridge by telling the enemy that the whole war had been called off – probably a pair of pre-Industrial bloody Scotts. 

It was only stupid if it didn’t work, he promised himself.  He tried to make himself believe it, but the truth was that he was still afraid.  The fear sat inside his stomach and trembled coldly. 

He couldn’t see Andy Correia beyond the high-backed driver’s seat. It was the third time he’d met the Brazilian, but he still didn’t trust him.  He’d saved Scott’s life … _twice_ , if Scott’s vague mentions of Ecuador were to be believed.  Scott said he’d changed sides.  Still, Stonebridge didn’t trust him.  His motives were opaque.   Stonebridge did not like men with opaque motives.  

“Scott,” Stonebridge whispered, pitching his voice softly so that the engine noise drowned him out.   

“What?”

“What if this is a trap?” 

“You wait until _now_ to bring that up?”  Richmond breathed at him, a few feet away behind the next seat. 

“It’s not a trap,” Scott said.  “If Andy was against us, I’d be having a long intimate chat with Toufeeq right now.” 

“It could still be a trap,” Stonebridge insisted in a quick hiss.  “What if Toufeeq’s paying him to deliver the whole of Section Twenty into his hands?  What if letting _you_ go was using a sprat to catch a mackerel?”

“Jesus Christ,” Scott groaned.  “You’re really _set_ on the happy feels right now, aren’t you?”

“I’m sitting on a bomb,” Stonebridge whispered.  “It tends to put me in a reflective mood.”

“Wuss,” Scott whispered.  “You’re scared of a li’l bomb.”

“Piss-artist,” he whispered hotly.  He couldn’t let that go unchallenged.  “ _You’re_ scared of fire; that’s why you disappear every time there’s a– !”

“ _Shut up!_ ” Dalton hissed at them.  “Now is _really_ not the time for your Laurel and Hardy routine!” 

Scott shut up for all of two minutes. 

Then, “ _I’ve_ always thought we were more like Spongebob and Patrick…,” he observed.

He might be sitting on a bomb, but something about Scott’s tone of voice made Stonebridge huff with laughter in spite of himself.  He didn’t even need Scott to tell him which of their partnership Scott considered ‘Patrick.’  He heard Richmond chuckling under her breath as well. 

Scott must have heard them, because Stonebridge heard him let out a satisfied, _“Hneh!”_  

Scott had had the last word, which usually satisfied him; at least for a while.  They drove in silence, listening to the car’s engine and the tyres along the tar.  The stupid joke had gone some way to deflating his worry, at least.

There was no-one else he would rather go into battle with than Damien Scott.  He could almost feel Scott’s effortless self-confidence, along the shared warmth where they touched.  He was going into a fight with his best friend at his back - or at any rate, between his legs.  Scott was broken inside, but he was still the best soldier Stonebridge had ever fought with.  His own fractures and Scott's ran at right-angles to each other, so that their weaknesses counted each other out, and their partnership was greater than the two of them separately could be.  They fought as if they had been _born_ to fight alongside each other.

Stonebridge was still afraid, but he had been afraid before.  His fear was not his master any longer.  As long he did not let his friends down, he was ready to get on with the job.  He was going into battle with his friends, the best combat soldiers in the world; better than Delta, better than the SAS; and he was one of them.  There was no better morale-booster than that. 

Everything _else_ , he put into a mental box and closed the lid, the way he’d taught himself in boarding school, and pushed the box to the bottom of his mind. His plans for Scott would have to wait; the mission came first.

The road was dark, and the bottom of the Volkswagen was as black as pitch.  Andy turned, the van swaying as it steered around the corner.  The road changed; became less smooth.  Andy began to yaw the van slightly.  He was steering around potholes, but the suspension was still drumming under them.  Bad road: side road. 

“ _Bravo team_ ,” Sinclair said, quietly.  “ _You are approaching Camp B. ETA five minutes._ ” 

“Roger that,” Dalton spoke for all of them. 

They drove on. 

His legs were cranked up against Scott, and his body armour and pouches were digging into his sides.  Getting out of this coffin and stretching his legs had become something to anticipate in its own right. 

He was ready.  But now that he was ready, he couldn’t _wait_ to start.  He wanted to get it over with, sooner rather than later.  The waiting was chewing on his nerves.  Live or die, he wanted the question resolved, right now.  _Come on, come on, come on… let’s get it over with_ …  His back was sweating inside his armour.   

“Nearly there,” Andy said.  Stonebridge couldn’t see him, but could hear the stress in his voice.  “The gate is ahead.  Guarded.”

“Take it easy, Andy,” Scott said.  “They checked you out; they’ll check you in again.  Just play it cool.”  His voice was calm, as if he was talking about getting into a casino with a strict dress code. 

“ _Si_ …,” Andy said.  “Rio-style.”  He wriggled himself in the seat, squeaking the springs slightly.  He fished at the gear lever, slowing down. 

Lights began to reflect against the ceiling.  Stonebridge closed his eyes so that they would not glitter in the dark against his face-paint.  He turned his head sideways.  The human brain had an instinctive knack for picking out the pattern of a face – eyes, mouth, nose – and the simplest way to break that pattern was to look away.  If the sentries happened to look in through the window, they shouldn’t see a face looking back at them. 

Narsil slowed to a halt, and Andy wound the window down.  He shouted out of the window, and Stonebridge heard voices shout back.  He was surprised to hear Portuguese.  He couldn’t follow the conversation at all; he spoke even less Portuguese than he spoke Spanish. 

Richmond spoke up, her whisper barely over a breath, just audible over the loud Portuguese.  “They’re asking him where his passenger is…” she translated.  “He says his passenger has gone to a brothel.” 

Andy called a last parting greeting, something that might have been thank you.  Something banged against the side of the van, making Stonebridge jump, but it was not a bullet; just a parting thump of someone’s hand as the old Volkswagen pulled past. 

“They bought it,” Richmond said, in relief and astonishment.  Stonebridge opened his eyes again. 

Andy fished for a gear change, and the Volkswagen moved forward.  “We are inside the gate,” Andy muttered. His words were muffled, clearly trying to speak without moving his mouth too much. 

“Portuguese?” Scott muttered. 

“Angolans,” Andy muttered.  “Savimbi’s vetinararies.  Veterinaries.” 

“Veterans, buddy,” Scott supplied.  “No _ee’_ s.”

The Volkswagen began to gather speed.  The ground was lumpy under the suspension; a dirt road?  He could hear the springs of Andy’s seat. 

“Passing barracks, now,” Andy said. 

“Keep going,” Scott urged. 

Voices called, outside.  Stonebridge could hear the question in the pitch of that voice. 

Andy yelled out of the window.  “It’s okay! I go further!”  It was no answer at all, but it seemed to be enough, because he drove on, and no-one else shouted. 

The van’s front began to swoop up and down over its front axle, bouncing along like a boat under the impulsion of its rear engine.  The engine strained, heaving itself over the ground – _is that grass?_ Stonebridge wondered –  and the shock absorbers drummed loudly. 

Narsil was being taken for the original Volkswagen; the wolf had been taken for the hound… Any second now, someone would notice that it wasn’t exactly the same Volkwagen. 

 _Any second now_ …

Sinclair spoke up.  “ _Hundred metres to target…”_ His voice was serene, the calm certainty of a clock.  “ _Target is at your_ _two o’clock_.” 

They needed to make a turn.  They needed to bring Narsil right up to the barn if it was going to do its job… Stonebridge’s heart was beating fast; noticeable because he could not shift or fidget to release his stress. 

Another shout, “Andy!”  This time the voice was much closer to the car.  “Where are you going?  Park on that side!” 

Andy yelled.  “I need the toilet!” 

“ _Huh?”_ the voice shouted back. 

“I said I need the toilet!  Can’t stop here!  Need toilet!  Need a shit!   _Fuera de mi modo!_ ” 

They hadn’t actually come up with a reason for Andy to drive Narsil right up to the missiles.  An oversight, but Andy was making it up on the fly. 

“What the fuck?”  the man outside called, but he sounded incredulous, not alarmed.  His voice dropped away as Narsil rolled on.  “He said he needs to take a dump…” he said, to someone else, his voice fading into the distance.  Stonebridge could imagine the puzzled shrug. 

Puzzled, but not alarmed. 

They were getting in, deeper and deeper, and the alarm had not been given.  Narsil rolled sluggishly, heaving itself over the tussocks of grass, but every turn of the wheels took it closer to the target.  Slowly, in full view of the whole camp, they crept closer to the target, and not a single shot had been fired at them. 

“ _Fifty metres_ ,” Sinclair reported.  “ _You need to make a turn_ …”

Narsil turned, as if Andy could hear Sinclair.  Stonebridge felt the floor sway under him.   Overloaded with hidden soldiers, top heavy with C4, and not a vehicle that could turn on a tickey in the first place. 

“I see the barn,” Andy said. 

“Where are you going?”  A new voice, shouting in alarm.  “Take that thing back to the parking lot!”

Andy yelled out of the window, a string of Spanish, and followed it up by, “Don’t you think so?”

“What?” 

“Nostromo!” Andy burbled, cheerful gibberish.  “I take it to Toufeeq!  He is asking to read it.”

“ _Here_ we go,” Scott whispered.  He sounded gleeful; delighted with the prospect of violence. 

“You can’t park so close to the barn!”

“I taking the book for Toufeeq!” Andy insisted.  “He needing it.  Go and ask him!” 

This fellow wasn’t buying Andy’s bollocks.  Stonebridge wrapped his fingers around the stock of his M4. 

“What the hell?  Stop the van, Andy!” the voice outside yelled, louder.   

“Nostromo,” Andy insisted out of the window.  “Go and ask Toufeeq!” 

Narsil rolled at the same speed.  It didn’t yaw.  It didn’t accelerate.  Andy kept it trundling along the same implacable straight line.  

“Stop the fucking van!”  the man shouted.  Confusion had become laden with irritation.  “I’m not fucking around!  Stop the van!”

“You should read it too!” Andy said. 

“ _I said, stop!  Or I’ll shoot!_ ” 

“Go for it!” Scott yelled.  He heaved himself up, throwing Stonebridge’s legs to one side.  “Pedal to the metal!” 

The engine roared as Andy smashed down the accelerator.  He struck wildly for a lower gear, and yelled as if shouting could make Narsil go faster.  Stonebridge felt his body rock as the Volkwagen lurched.  It surged forward.  Someone outside shouted.  Stonebridge heaved himself up to his knees. 

“Hey!  What the fuck!” 

“Go!”  Dalton shouted. 

Stonebridge was already rising, and the M4 was coming up in his hands.  He threw himself upright and turned.  He could see, at last, and the M4 lined as he got his first glimpse of where they were. 

The man alongside the driver’s door was bringing his handgun up in both hands.  The barrel was lining on Andy.  Stonebridge leaned his M4 out of the open window, and fired. 

He fired a three-shot burst at the same moment the other man did – _Rat-at-at!_   The handgun flapped up as the M4’s bullets smashed into his chest. 

Stonebridge shouted as he fired; and as if the shots had awoken it, the anger and aggression flared into life inside him.  His roar was a wordless blare of fury.

He was the first.  The deception was over.  The wolf was baring its teeth.

“Go, go, go!”  Scott roared.  His M4 was turning in the other direction, opening fire out of the other window.  “Go, go, go!” 

Baxter was shooting out the rear window.  Behind him Richmond and Dalton were coming up as well.  Narsil exploded with gunfire.  The windows shattered into a frosting and then just dissolved.  The van was filled with unbearable noise and adrenalin, a hideous painful hammering racket. 

Andy pressed Narsil forward.  _“Yaahhhhh!”_

Stonebridge could see floodlights, and a lawn bleached yellow by the glare.  Narsil was galloping across the lawn, accelerating.  Men were over there, clustered around a nissen hut.  Some stared, shocked; some were breaking into a run.  None of them was Craig Hanson.  As he looked, some of them swung weapons up, and he leaned into the M4’s recoil as he fired at them. 

They were waking up, but Section Twenty had surprise on their side, and they were nearly there.  Narsil thumped over the rough ground. The ceiling came down to bash Stonebridge’s helmet, and the seat thumped up to jar his teeth and set his barrel waving erratically.  He gripped the back of the driver’s seat with one hand and fired one-handed, spray-and-praying the nissen hut.

“Go!” Dalton shouted.  Richmond was up, her M4 aiming. 

The first sudden burst of fire came back at them from Scott’s side.  The enemy had cottoned on, and they were opening up at the invader.  The wolf had bitten into the flock, but the dogs were beginning to bite back. 

Incoming fire, too close; Richmond’s return fire deafened his ears.  Bullets thumped into Narsil’s sides.  Incoming fire; they’d been made, they were under fire, and they could not stop!   Narsil’s engine screamed, pushing it over the lawn as fast as it could go.  

Stonebridge stole a split second to look out the windshield, through the gap between the driver’s headrest and the sun-visor. 

The side of the barn was rushing up at them, leaping and shuddering to meet Narsil’s rush.  It was lit up like a stage, and expanded as Narsil rushed to meet it.  And then he had to turn back and open fire out of the driver’s side window, spraying that side of the lawn.  Bullets hammered and thumped into Narsil’s sides, zipping and ricocheting around in the cabin.

Thirty metres!  How many more bullets could Narsil take and still _go?_

Andy was bent double, trying to hide under the dash.  His fingers clutched at the top of his head.   

“Andy!” Scott yelled.  “Bail out!  Bail out!” 

“No!  Keep going!” Stonebridge yelled, but suddenly the driver’s door was open.  Wind streamed in.  “He bottled!” Stonebridge screamed, furious.

He saw Scott diving headlong, scrambling between the seats on hands and knees.  “I’ve got the wheel!”  Scott yelled from the driver’s foot well.  “I’m on it!” 

“Shit!” Stonebridge shouted.  Ten metres.    He sat up again, and fired out of the window; a long furious burst, emptying his magazine.  His foresight leaped and danced.  He yelled at the top of his lungs, not even aware of where his shots were going, conscious only of _speed, speed, speed._

_BLAM!_

The light was gone as Narsil’s nose slammed into the wall.  Stonebridge was thrown off balance.  He flailed against the seat to catch himself. 

The door parted with a prolonged shriek, as if they’d rammed a fishing boat.  Narsil yawed, wildly, and then counter-yawed as Scott yanked at the wheel over his head. 

Stonebridge caught his balance, and turned on the seat.  He rammed another magazine into the M4.  “Let’s go!  Let’s go!” 

Narsil was slowing, tyres screaming and its nose dropping as the brakes bit – Scott leaning on the footbrake with both hands. 

No time to sit around.  Stonebridge yanked at the lever, and threw the door open before they were stopped.  He threw the door with so much force it bounced off its own hinges and ran back at him.  He threw himself out and landed in a rolling fall. 

He rolled to a firing position on one knee. 

They were in a high-ceilinged space, laced with girders and steel pillars, and bare of human comfort.  The floor was a flat sheet of cement.  Bits of door were falling behind Narsil; a cloud of dust hanging in the flourescent lights. 

Richmond and Dalton arrived beside him, and he lifted off the ground in a half-crouch and turned to guard their flank. 

And _there they were._  

For a second he gaped at them with the same sense of amazed achievement that he’d felt when he’d thrown down on Latif in Budapest.  All the effort, all the stress, all the fighting and violence since Cape Town … all for these.   

Their sides were shiny, a dark green paint finish, and they were bigger than he’d expected.  They were positioned upright.  The light glittered off them.  There they were; four SS-23 Okas, fuelled and programmed, and ready for four nuclear warheads to be fitted to their nose cones. 

Scott arrived next to him.  “Five minutes!”

The moment passed.  They had five minutes to get out of the death-zone. 

“Come on!” Stonebridge yelled.  He took off across the floor.  The rest of the Bravo team was behind him, closed up, guns traversing constantly as they flowed across the floor. 

They had achieved total surprise, but Toufeeq’s men were not amateurs or weekend warriors.  They were getting their act together.  As Stonebridge dashed across the floor, three men leaped out of a small door set in the side of the barn.  They carried assault rifles – AK47’s, _again_ – but the team’s weapons were already lined, fingers on triggers.  Wyatt Earp wouldn’t be faster than seven hundred rounds a minute, and the three men dropped. 

_Not-Hanson!_

“Six o’clock!” Scott yelled, and there was another burst of fire behind Stonebridge.  He spun around to see that more Camp B men were coming in through the hole in the doors punched by Narsil. 

Scott had ducked down under the shelter of a pillar supporting the roof, and was giving them hell.  Baxter jumped to support him, and they hosed down the door.  The enemy ducked back, throwing themselves out of sight. 

 _That_ exit was blocked by angry Camp B’s.   

“Go forward!” Dalton yelled from behind him.  “Side door!  Go!”

“I’ve got the rear!” Scott yelled.  “Go!”

They had to leave Narsil to itself.  If they were seen to cling to Narsil, if they were suspected for a second to be _protecting_ it, Camp B would guess that Narsil was more than just their infiltration tactic.  Human instinct said to huddle inside a defensive perimeter; human instinct was wrong.  They had to pretend defeat if they wanted victory.

“Going forward!” Stonebridge shouted.  He ran across the cement to the door, and button-hooked around it with Richmond on his heels. 

Inside was an office, and it had another door, and that door was open.  The night was outside, but even as he registered the open doorway it was blocked by a wall of denim.  A Camp B man, on his way _in_ , and Stonebridge gave him a short controlled burst.  He collapsed. 

“Forward!” Richmond yelled, her voice shrill with stress.  She closed up on the door, and took a lightning shufti around the doorway.  “Four guys at ten o’clock!”

“Going through!” 

Speed and aggression would get them through.  Stonebridge flung himself through the doorway, going right in a low roll.  He rolled himself completely over and up to his knee in a single movement, and as they lined their guns on him he heard Richmond’s gun open up on _them_.  He rolled to a firing position and finished them off.  Blood and cordite and racketing noise all around him, and the enemy – _notHanson_ – was out for the count.   

Baxter and Dalton were coming out.  Scott brought up the rear, guarding their arses with his M4 pointed behind them. 

“Clear this side!” Richmond yelled from the left of the door where she’d bolted out on Stonebridge’s heels.  She took off, taking the lead. 

“They’re in there like bees!” Scott shouted.    

“They’ll be after us in a second!”  It wouldn’t take Camp B more than a few moments to work out that the invaders had run out through the side door. 

Stonebridge followed Richmond at a run.  They ran across lumpy grass under the floodlights.  He could hear and feel the others at his back, their combined eyes and reflexes covering them from all angles. 

“Here they come!” Richmond barked.  She opened fire to their right, back in the direction that Narsil had rolled just moment ago.  A flood of enemies were coming up from that direction, from the front of the barn. 

Stonebridge dropped to one knee to support Richmond.  He fired, in short sharp bursts.  _Rat-at-at-at!_ Aim! _Rat-at-at-at!_ Aim! _Rat-at-at-at_.  “I’m out!  Changing!”

“That’s the barracks!” Dalton yelled.  “Go left!” 

“Go!” Stonebridge yelled over his shoulder.  “We’ll cover you!”

Dalton took off, with Scott and Baxter close by her side.  Stonebridge stayed on one knee, until he was sure they were clear, and then lifted up.  “Go!” he shouted at Richmond.

“Moving!” Richmond yelled. 

They bolted after the other three. 

His breath was harsh in his throat. They had less than five minutes to clear the area.  But their edge of surprise was far narrower than they’d anticipated. 

The length of time it had taken for him and Richmond to cover the other three was long enough for one of the parked technicals to start its engine. 

Stonebridge heard the engine noise, and turned to face it.  The car came around the corner of the barn and swung around, slewing across the grass.  The lights were swinging in their direction, and suddenly the weapon on the back started up. 

Richmond threw herself backwards, lit like a dancer in the headlights.  50 cal. bullets traversed toward her, walking to her position, thudding up the ground.  She flew backwards, diving to the cover of a tree.  She rolled to one knee and her weapon lifted to her shoulder.  She was going to face down the technical.  Her face was black with face paint, but the whites of her eyes gleamed with intent.  Her Dragunov shuddered in her arms with returning fire. 

The technical was looking at Richmond.  It was walking its fire to Richmond, and Stonebridge had time to drop to one knee.  He had time to steady the M4 and draw a perfect bead.  He followed the muzzle blasts of the HMG, and breathed out carefully as he squeezed the trigger so that his shot did not fly wide. 

The hail of HMG stopped.  The broad barrel leaped up to face the sky.

“ _Good_ one!” Richmond whooped. 

“Go!” he roared.  Richmond riddled the windshield of the technical with a burst and then sprinted away.  Stonebridge leaped up, fired out the last of his barrel, weight on his back foot, then whirled and ran after Richmond.  Already someone was clambering up to get at the double-triggers of the machine gun; steady the thick barrel toward them…

Richmond made a beeline for the shade of the nearest nissen hut.  They peeled around it, just as the technical lurched into movement.  Trying to track them.

They had four minutes to get out of Narsil’s kill zone. 

Floodlights were coming up around the barn, lighting up the building’s front like a shuttle launch.  They were leaping to defend the barn, rushing to protect the precious Okas, unaware that the weapon had already been slipped inside.  Stonebridge could hear shouting through a megaphone in the distance. 

“Where are the others?” Stonebridge barked. 

Richmond slowed, to pirouette, her foresight scanning. “Don’t see them.” 

Perhaps the others had taken a wrong turn around a tree.  They couldn’t stop and search, but for the moment they were undetected.  They’d lost track of the rest of Bravo team, but the enemy had lost track of _them_. 

It didn’t matter.  They knew where the others were going.  They were surrounded by Camp B.  They had to follow the route they’d mapped out from the satellite images.  Peel left, cut around the barracks area, avoid the parked vehicles around the back.  Sprint across the open ground to the perimeter. 

Stonebridge and Richmond ran, keeping their heads down. 

Suddenly, Stonebridge was taking fire.  Bullets were pocking the ground all around him.  He could hear them, _whip-whip-whop_ past his head.  He dived sideways into the nearest tree.  “Fuck!” he snapped. 

Richmond threw herself sideways.  She hit the ground rolling, and then instead of rolling up again, rolled onto her back and fired off a full burst into the air.   She emptied her magazine straight up. The recoil juddered at her elbows in the odd firing angle as she emptied her magazine straight up into the sky. 

No.  Into the _tree._  

Stonebridge slammed to a halt and swung his M4 up.  There was a crash, and suddenly something heavy fell.  It thumped into the ground. 

He swung his barrel to face it, but the man was dead.  _NotHanson._  

“Sniper position!” Richmond reported, changing magazines. 

“Good one!” he said, impressed. 

Richmond rolled up and scrambled to her feet, but instead of standing she doubled over and collapsed again.  “Ow!” she yelped.  “Fuck!”

“What’s up?”  He backed up so he could look down at her without lowering his M4. 

She was on the ground, doubled over.  “It’s my fucking ankle again!” 

Her ankle: the number one reason she didn’t go on long-range missions with them.  Something to do with the engagement that had got her into SF in the first place; he didn’t know the details. 

“Can you walk?”  His eyes kept scanning around them; they had a moment. 

“Not far.”

He took his left arm off the M4 and reached down to her.  “Give me your arm, I’ll…”

“No!” she yelled at him, and hit his arm away.  “Get me up in that tree!” 

“We’re still in the kill zone.  I’ll carry you!”  Narsil was going to blow any second now. 

“Get me up in that tree and stop being a fucking gentleman!”  She latched onto his arm and used him as a lever to pull herself up. 

It was her choice.  He could carry her; but not if he was going to have to fight _her_ as well as Camp B.  He let her limp from his shoulder, her weapon dangling from its slings.  She used him as a lever until she got her shoulders into the tree, and then he got one hand under her thigh and boosted her up bodily.  She had one good leg, a knee and two arms, and she scrambled up out of his sight with the eager speed of an angry ape. 

A kick, and a curse and the sound of breaking leaves.  “I’m up!  Go!” 

“Good luck!” he said, and took off.

Not a moment too soon. 

He ran, and as he ran he saw a group of men arrive around the corner of the hedge ahead of him.  They saw him. 

Couldn’t get away; the only way was forward. 

He knelt and gave them a burst, and then ran forward, and gave them another burst.  They dropped back, under the hail of M4 fire – heavier than their handguns – and he ran forward until he saw they were dropping out of his line of sight.  Then he redirected away from them, bolting for the cover of the nearest darkened nissen hut. 

He crouched under the cover of the nissen hut and caught his breath.  They’d fallen back, but they were going to call in the cavalry. 

He checked his magazines, running a hand over his chest and counting by feel.  

Enough.  But not enough to fight his way single-handed through seventy men.

There was not enough ammo between _all_ of them to fight their way through seventy men.  They were separated.  They were more heavily outnumbered than last night; they were more disorganised than last night; they did not have an ex-fil plan like last night.

The truth dawned on him at last. 

They weren’t going to get out of this one alive.

He didn’t know why none of them had brought this up, but in hindsight it was obvious.  Outnumbered; five soldiers against seventy?   They weren’t going to get out alive.  They weren’t even _trying_ to get out alive.  It was a suicide mission; their only objective, giving Scott’s bomb time to blow up.  They were going to sacrifice themselves, in order to save Cairo or Casablanca or Kinshasa from destruction.  Even Sinclair had fallen silent in his ear. 

If any of them _did_ get out of it alive, he hoped it would be Scott.  Or any of them.  But particularly Scott. 

Stonebridge had only been in love three times in his life, and his love had killed two of them.  They’d loved him, and they’d died.  He wasn’t going to lose Scott as well, if he could stop it. 

 _Nothing_ was coming between himself and Scott…

The thought zipped through his brain with the speed of a fish slipping through fingers.  It filled him with fresh energy. 

“Fuck!” he said aloud, “Bring it on!  Bloody-well _bring it on_!”

He heard the sound of an engine coming, and slipped backward around the corner of the hut as another of their technicals came around.  The back was solid passengers, and they looked a tad annoyed … 

He was outnumbered.  The obvious thing to do would be to get the hell away from this corner.  The obvious thing to do would be to strike away from the corner of the hut and try to run for the dark beyond the trees. 

But it was the obvious thing and so he would do the opposite.  He sat up and opened fire over the corner of the hut at the side of the technical. 

The lights of the technical shattered and went out.  He heard return fire, and screams.  The technical yawed wildly as the driver lost control and slid to halt.  The passengers tumbled out, sprinting to outflank him.  He blew through a whole magazine at them, making good on his surprise, and then whirled around and ducked away. 

Any second now… He changed magazines.  A heartbeat later he was ready to hammer at the technical again.  Knock out the gun on the back of the technical first… 

The stun grenade arrived over the roof of the nissen hut. 

He saw it bounce off the sloping side of the hut, just in front of his face.  He saw it,  recognised it, but it was too late to get out of the way.    

The explosion hit his brain like a tank hitting a garden shed. 

He opened his mouth and shouted back into the flaming sizzle of his senses.  _… Grenade!..._   He felt his throat vibrate, but he heard nothing.  His eyes were a red pulsing glare of retinal echo.  The grenade had been too close to his head.  _… Fuck!..._ he shouted.   

The light had shut down his eyes, and closed off his ears.  He felt the ground under his shoulder, and realized only then that he was lying curled up in a ball with one hand over his head.  He was deaf, blind, shocked, and vulnerable. 

He had to get up and move, deaf or not!  Lie here, and he would die!  He grasped at his M4 by feel, and felt for its trigger, and raised it up.  Dark shadows jerked beyond the red glare of his blown retinas, and something crashed into the back of his neck. 

He fell. 

He came to, but it was too late.  They were all over him.  Hands were under his arms, dragging at him roughly. 

He flailed at them, snapping back into the fight, but he was dazed, and there were too many hands pushing at him.  His neck was forced forward while his wrists were dragged back.  He tried to drive forward, towing his attackers, but there were too many of them.  Something cut into his wrists, and he yanked his shoulders, trying to roll free, but they hauled him back.  The plastic cuffs were snug around his wrists, and the hands were holding him by both arms, and he was aware suddenly of something cold and hard pressing against the side of throat. 

Trapped, noosed, with a gun at his throat, and helpless to defend himself. 

He yielded. 

“Fuck,” he grated through his teeth. 

The gun dug into his throat just under his jaw.  “Don’t move, _poes-_ face.”

For a moment he thought the voice was Hanson’s, but the accent was wrong.

He squeezed his eyes shut, and then opened them wide, trying to see.  There were shapes moving around the fuck-up that the flash-bang had made of his retinas, and he could hear voices, but they weren’t talking to him. 

He was deep in the shit, but there was nothing he could do about it.  They yanked at his arms, and he was frogmarched forward.  His legs didn’t want to obey him.  His feet dribbled over each other uselessly like sausages, until his captors took a moment to open a door in front of him.  He caught his balance, standing on his own for a moment before they pushed him into a march again. 

He was pushed into a lighted room, and finally he could see beyond the smears on his retinas. 

The barn was buzzing with movement.  Narsil still stood where they had left it, with its doors gaping.  Its lights stared across the barn at the fat green flanks of the Okas. It had been abandoned, which meant Toufeeq had no inkling of what it was. 

 _Why_ had it not gone off yet?  He didn’t have more than a second to look at it before they hurried him past it, and he didn’t dare stare at it too curiously.  _Damien, brother, if you fucked this one up, so help me God I really_ will _shoot you this time!_

One of the men opened the side door Section Twenty had run through just a few minutes ago. 

Silent Bob was in the office, striding back and forth beyond the table, snapping commands into a portable radio.  He turned, as Stonebridge was dragged in. 

“We’ve got one!” one of Stonebridge’s captors said. 

Stonebridge was forced in front of the table, and made to stand there, a captor on either side of him holding him up by his arms.  His knees were still weak and wobbling, but he gritted his jaw and straightened his back.

“Mr Michael Stonebridge,” Silent Bob said.

His accent was more pronounced.  He was tightly controlled, but his anger came out in his voice – _Stonn-breech_.  He paced around the table, and stood in front of Stonebridge. 

“Toufeeq al-Tanzir,” Stonebridge said.  A Gaddafi loyalist, Stonebridge remembered: full of hatred for the SAS and everything it stood for.  Stonebridge was not among friends here.  He was as deep in the shit as he had ever been in his life.  Deeper, because if Toufeeq didn’t kill him, there was still Narsil out there…

“You’ve got _one._   Now go and get the rest of them,” Toufeeq ordered, nodding his men off. 

“Yessir,” Stonebridge heard, and some of his captors departed.  The men holding onto his right and left arms did not leave.  The barrel of the handgun was still pointing at his face. 

“Did you enjoy my little present for you at the sheep farm?”  Toufeeq asked.

“Thanks, mate, it was loads of fun.  That’s why we came back for a sec –!”  He broke off as Toufeeq hit him. 

Toufeeq’s fist came out and around for Stonebridge’s nose, glancing off the cartilage of his nose.  Flashing neon stripes danced in front of his vision for a second.  He hissed in pain.  That _hurt._

“You nearly spoiled Nostromo in Cape Town, but not again. My men will round up the rest of yours, and we’ll put an end to Section Twenty once and for all.” 

“It was worth a try,” Stonebridge said, with a deliberately snide tone. “Third time’s the charm, eh?”  

He received another knock to his nasal septum; this time from the other side, and the neon stripes bobbed in his vision again.  He supposed his nose must make an attractive target.  “Bloody hell!”  The men on either side of him dragged him upright again. 

“Why did you attack, if you were so outnumbered?” 

He forced his back to straighten again.   “We were trying to get _you,_ ” he lied.  “We figured you knew all Knox’s plans.” 

“I have been trained to withstand torture.”

“We were trained by the same people who run Guantanamo,” Stonebridge said.  “Everybody breaks.” 

“So will you,” Toufeeq promised.  He picked up the walkie-talkie on the desk, and started speaking into it. 

The urge to turn around and look over his shoulder was almost unbearable, even though the door was closed.  His eyeballs just about ached to try to have a look at the Volkswagen.  He wanted to climb into Scott’s toy, and open it up, and find out why it hadn’t _bloody_ gone off when it was supposed to.

Then again, if it _did_ go off… he was not only too close to the bomb to survive, he was just metres away from the missiles themselves.  Once the fuel was torched off by the bomb blast, the heat would incinerate them all instantly.  If Scott’s bomb went off _now,_ he wouldn’t know a thing about it.

Well, at least he’d see Kerry again soon.  He and Kerry and Kate and Scott, all on the other side, together.  Wouldn’t _that_ be nice. 

Bugger that.   The longer he kept Toufeeq occupied, the more time Andy Correia or Scott had to detonate Narsil remotely.  He was still in this fight, even if Toufeeq didn’t know it.  He straightened his back. 

Toufeeq must have seen something in his face, because he stepped forward and bashed Stonebridge across the nose again with his free hand. 

Neon stripes danced again. 

There was another commotion at the door.  The door opened, and another knot of men came in. 

Andy Correia was in the middle.  He wasn’t bound, but the expressions of the men on either side of him didn’t look very friendly. 

And _that_ was why Correia hadn’t set off the bomb with the phone, Stonebridge realized.  He couldn’t very well whip it out and ring up his mum for a quick chat, with his comrades already watching him with suspicion. 

“Correia?” Toufeeq asked, putting down the radio.

“He drove them in,” one of the men asked.  “I saw him.  I asked him where he was going, and he told me some crap about a book.” 

“I have no choice!” Correia yelled.  “They make me!”

“They _made_ you do it, did they?” Toufeeq asked, contempt in his voice.  “How did they make you?”

“They have a fishing line around my throat!” Andy said.  His hand came up, feeling his own larynx as if he could still feel the narrow pressure of a line there.  “If not drive, they pull and cut my throat open.  I try to warn you.  Why do you think I shout about Nostromo?”

“That’s some warning,” the man who’d seen him scoffed.  “How the fuck was I supposed to know what you meant?”

“Where’s Jacques?” Toufeeq asked. 

“Dead.  He try to run, and they shot him dead.  They murder him, just like that,” Andy snapped his fingers.  “I am not fighting them.  I give warning when I can, but what can I do?”

“They’re scum,” one of Stonebridge’s captors said. 

“You know this one?” Toufeeq asked, pointing to Stonebridge.  “We met him at the airport.”

“Bastard pig,” Andy said.  His thin lips curled up in a sneer,  “ _He_ is the one holding the fishing line.”  His fingers stroked at his throat, his eyes fixed and full of malice.

“How many more are there?” Toufeeq asked.

“Only three.”  So, Damien Scott was still officially dead and buried.   

“They were trying to kidnap me,” Toufeeq said.  “Kill them all.  We can use this one for information.  Kill the rest.” 

“Yes sir,” the men who had brought in Andy said.  The three of them filed out. 

If Stonebridge was ever going to get a chance, this was it.  Andy was lying about the fishing line, and he was lying about Scott: Andy was still with Section Twenty.  The two of them, versus Toufeeq and two of his men – and Stonebridge’s hands were tied behind his back, and he didn’t know if Andy knew how to handle himself in a fight.  Or if he wouldn’t just bail out again. 

Toufeeq turned back to Stonebridge, and looked at him closely as if he was an interesting game bird and he was pondering how best to dress him out.  “Bring a chair,” Toufeeq ordered.  “Tie him to it.  He can sit and wait until we’re ready to talk to him.” 

“Ja,” the man on Stonebridge’s left side agreed.  He felt the hands on that side disappear. 

“Toufeeq,” Andy said. 

“You,” Toufeeq said.  He turned away from Stonebridge to face Andy.  “Get out there,” he ordered.  “Go to Pavel and tell him I sent you.” 

Andy pursed his lips, as if he was interpreting the idea in his head.  He lifted his eyebrows, and then shook his head.  

“No,” he said.  He brought his hand out from behind his back, and his gun lined on Toufeeq. 

Stonebridge didn’t wait for him to fire it. 

He wrenched himself around to face the man on his right, yanking his bound arms out of his grip.  The man still clung to his upper arm, and Stonebridge’s sudden pull dragged him forward off balance.  Stonebridge’s forehead smashed into his nose. 

Stonebridge felt the man’s nose crack against his frontal bone.  The impact jolted his neck and teeth. 

Hanging onto Stonebridge suddenly wasn’t a priority any more, and Stonebridge was free.  He stepped back.  He was aware of a desperate struggle  to his side, but he didn’t have time to help Andy.  His opponent’s hands were flying up, clapping to his nose, but he wasn’t down.  Stonebridge took a step forward to deal with him.

But he didn’t get the chance to launch a kick.  The other one was coming back, barging forward, reaching over his friend.  The man’s hand was going for the gun in his shoulder-holster. 

Stonebridge could deal with that.  He took a step forward to meet his new enemy.  Turn his forward boot just _so_ , tip his hips just _so_ , bring up his left knee up and out just _so_.  His hips whiplashed his shin around.  His kick struck with full force, and the man dropped as his knee snapped.  There was a howl of pain. 

Stonebridge didn’t have time to mess around.  He stepped forward, lifted his boot and stomped on the man’s larynx as hard as he could.    

He swung to see where his first enemy was, but he didn’t get there.  Arms wrapped around his neck and throat, nearly pulling him over backwards. 

His first captor was on him from behind.  He could hear the wheezing of the man’s wrecked nose.  Stonebridge’s head was trapped, and his neck was crushed against a hard fore-arm, pressure tightening, blocking off his windpipe, blocking off his carotids. 

_Oh, shit, not again…_

_This_ wasn’t Scott.  This was _real._   The hands tightening around his throat were trying to kill him. 

He had the weight advantage here, but without his elbows and without his kicks he was hampered.  He tried to jack-knife and fling him over his shoulder, but the arm cranked closer over his throat, and suddenly he could see black dots in his vision. 

He was already running out of time.

He threw himself backwards, going all the way over the back of the desk, trying to smash his opponent loose so that he could roll free and kick.  His opponent landed on his back, but the grip didn’t loosen.  Stonebridge rolled around, trying to kick, trying to free himself with his weight or his legs.  His enemy clung to his back, knowing he needed only to hang on to win.  Stonebridge thrashed, flipped himself over, and and the arms loosened enough for him to take a frantic breath.  He fetched up on his knees. 

He felt the man’s weight shift, coming down on top of him, pressing him to the floor.  And suddenly his body was being hauled back.  Iron fingers wrapped around his throat, squeezing, digging into his larynx, dragging his head back.  His lungs heaved, fighting, but his airway was gone. 

Black dots fizzled in his vision. 

 

* * *

 

Scott found himself hunkered down in the lee of a truck during a lull in the shooting.   “Narsil should have gone off by now!” he shouted. 

“It’s definitely been more than five minutes,” Baxter grunted, ducking to change magazines. 

Narsil had not gone off; why not?  The bomb could be detonated remotely.  Andy had the phone with the bomb’s number but he hadn’t set it off; why not?  It wasn’t the St Nazaire bomb, it didn’t have a finicky 1940’s chemical timer, but it hadn’t gone off.  Why not? 

He’d wired something wrong; soldered something wrong; missed a connection somewhere.  Baxter had come outside and had a chat with him.  _Fuck it, I_ knew _multitasking and explosives didn’t mix!_

He would have to get in there, and set it off the hard way – open the engine, and cut the wire that opened the loop himself.  It would go off with him sitting on top of it, but if that was what it took…

_Fuckin’ hell, I’m never gonna get that dog, am I?_

“I’m going back to see what’s wrong!” 

“It’s suicide!”  Baxter shouted. 

Scott rammed another magazine into his weapon.  “My bomb, my job!” he yelled.  

“We’ll all go!” Dalton said. 

“No!  You need to draw them off!  Leave me here!” 

For a heartbeat Dalton stared at him.  “Good luck,” she hissed. 

“Fuck off.”  He didn’t need her goodwill.  He sat up and opened fire; sending suppressive fire rattling around the enemy behind the bore-hole cap.  He emptied his magazine, forcing the bad guys to duck down, and then dropped back again into cover.  “Go!” 

Baxter and Dalton burst out, opening fire, taking the fight to the enemy.  The enemy spotted them, turned after them, and opened fire.  They were close to the perimeter, close to their hidden exfil, and they were going to make it.

Scott was alone.  He stayed where he was, lying flat until they were well clear, until the sounds of gunfire moved away.  Then he rolled himself over and back up to his feet.  He threw himself from cover into a run, back the way they had come. 

Fuck knew where Mikey and Julia were.  They’d been right there, behind him, and then they weren’t.  But they would have to look after themselves… he had a job to do…

He began to run back toward the building.  Army doctrine said firing without moving was wasting ammo and running without firing was suicide, but he was running to his suicide anyway, and there was no point ducking and hiding when the enemy was wide awake.  He just ran upright, carrying the M4 at low-ready, picking a rapid zig-zagging course that avoided coming face-to-face with the bad-guys. 

He expected to take fire any second.  He expected to be challenged.  He expected to feel the thump of a bullet, and his stomach was clenched in memory of the bullet that had ripped out part of his spleen in Sudan.   He could see Camp B guys running after Baxter and Dalton, silhouetted against the floodlights, and he could hear them, but they didn’t do shit to stop him.  They must have seen him, running flat out, but he was running in the wrong direction, and maybe they thought he was one of them?  Hell, who was dumb enough to run _back_ into a shit-storm? 

_Me, that’s who… Damien, you stupid fuck…_

He was going to set off that fucking thing, or die trying… At the very least, he was going to get his hands on Andy and that phone, and ring the call through himself.  That bomb was going to go off tonight, one way or another, whether Scott was in it at the time or not.

His heart jiggled in his chest, expecting a bullet at every moment, but he met no-one face-to-face, and none of the running silhouettes opened fire on him.  They were all running after Baxter and Dalton.  

No, fuck _that._   They were running in circles.  He could hear someone screaming orders, and sudden bursts of fire.  It was just like last night, and suddenly, Scott _got_ it. 

Toufeeq had seventy men here.  All special forces trained; all professionals.  But they had to keep a low profile, so they’d never operated as a combined unit, they all had different SOPs, _they all spoke different languages_.  No wonder they all ran around like headless chickens; half of them couldn’t talk to the other half. 

 _Fuck me_ , he thought, _We’re fighting the_ Costa Concordia! 

Scott found himself laughing aloud.  He was still laughing as he ran around a corner and found himself opposite a cluster of enemy. 

Either his laughter unsettled them, or it gave him a false familiarity, because it took them a moment to realize that he was _not_ one of their seventy familiar faces. 

He threw up his M4 and opened fire.  Point blank range, no need to aim.  He just jabbed the stock against his shoulder and sprayed wildly.  They dropped, rolling away from his fire like dropped laundry, and he ran straight through them, jumping them.   One of them hooked an arm up at him, but he kicked the arm aside and fired a shot down it.  “Fuck you!” he yelled at them.  He left them behind, and ran full tilt up to the side of the barn they had just left. 

The barn was lit up like Walmart, and the big hangar-like door was open.

They’d let him toddle all the way back to the barn like a bicycle courier, but he didn’t think they’d let him just mosey in and set off a bomb while they watched.  He trotted up to the side door, and paused a moment outside.  He put his ear to the gap in the door, with his M4 at low-ready and his finger on the trigger. 

No speech.  Just grunting and thumping.  If he didn’t know better he’d have sworn  someone in there was having crazy-monkey sex. 

Hey, fucking _or_ fighting … Damien Scott wanted _in._  

He kicked the door open and threw himself inside. 

The foresight of the M4 traversed over a tableau of violence. 

On the floor to his left, Michael was on his knees, being comprehensively strangled from behind by a blood-smeared monster.  Michael’s head was hauled back, and the whites of his eyes were rolled up.  His mouth gaped open slackly. 

On his right, Andy and Silent Bob were rolling on the ground like a pair of ferrets, grunting and panting with furious concentration.   

Scott slung his M4, pulled out his knife, and gripped it underhand.  He bent over Michael, drew his arm back like a cobra and punched it down in a single strike into Michael’s opponent’s back.

Blood exploded around the handle in a gust of hot stickiness.   Michael and his opponent collapsed, and the sticky knife was dragged from Scott’s fingers.  Michael began to make frantic choking noises.  He lay on the floor on his stomach, and flapped uselessly like a landed fish. 

Scott turned around.  _Your turn, asshole._  

Andy and Silent Bob were still on the floor, each trying to gouge the other’s eyes out.  They seemed equally matched.  Andy might not have military training, but he’d fought his way out of the worst of Rio’s _favelas_ by brains, will and sheer ferocity.  He fought with the limitless violence of a rat. 

 _Ain’t nobody got time fo’ dat…_ Scott picked up a fire extinguisher that had rolled to his feet.  He swung it around over his head like an axe and brought it down with a satisfying meaty bang against the crown of Silent Bob’s head.  “ _Fuck_ you!” 

Silent Bob collapsed as if he’d been shot. 

Scott let the fire-extinguisher fall.  He didn’t need to look to know the man had a broken skull.  That was a nine-kilo fire-extinguisher; had to be like getting hit with a submarine.  He wondered if he should say something fitting; something about Denzil Adonis, or Penzer’s drivers, or Taljaard’s murdered mechanics, but Silent Bob wouldn’t hear him anyway, and it wouldn’t get any of them back.  

Andy was rolling out from under Silent Bob, his eyes blank with violence, looking for more to smash.  His face was tight with rage, and his lips were smeared with blood – _biting?_ Scott thought.  He saw Scott standing over him, and his eyes widened.   

“Scott!” 

“Why hasn’t it blown up yet?” Scott demanded in Spanish.  

“ _You_ built it, you tell _me!_ ” Andy snapped back.  He pulled himself up, and bent over Silent Bob.  He hawked, and spat on the man’s face, and swore gutterally in Portuguese. 

Scott didn’t understand the words, but he recognised the tone.   He turned his back, and bent over Michael. 

Michael was learning how to breathe again.  He was sitting up, his hands still bound.  He made a noise that might have been an attempt at words, and then just coughed. 

“Don’t mention it,” Scott grinned.  He bent down and yanked his knife out of the dead man’s back, and then used the slippery blade to slit Mikey’s plastic cuffs.  Mikey reached up, and they linked fingers around wrists, and Scott hauled Mikey back up to his feet. 

“Thks,” Michael rasped, rubbing his throat with his fingers.  He turned around, and his eyes latched onto the corpse of the guy who’d been strangling him.  There was a pool of blood around him, and splatter, and Scott saw Mikey’s face jerk as the impact of it hit him. 

 _That right there is a flashback_ , Scott realized.  He reached out and gripped Michael’s shoulder, hard, squeezing with his fingers.  “Mikey!  Stay with me!” he hissed. 

Michael reached out to him, hanging onto his shoulder for balance, and he saw Michael’s eyes turn to him.  The granite jaw clenched, and then the blue eyes cleared, focused on his face.  Michael nodded, once, jerked his chin down and up, and swallowed heavily.  “I’m all right.”

“Yeah, you’re cool,” Scott told him. "You'll be okay."

Michael gave him a shove away, as if saying _, okay, that’s enough, I’m all fixed now_.  He took his eyes off Scott, and looked over his shoulder.  “Your _thing_ hasn’t gone off yet,” he rasped. 

Scott let him go.  “Yeah, tell me about it.”  He turned to the door that led into the rest of the barn, and listened.  He could hear voices on the other side. 

Andy had grown tired of swearing at Silent Bob's body, at last.  “They haven’t found the bomb yet,” Andy said, in Spanish. 

Scott took his gun off his shoulder.  “Yes, we’ll have to go in there and…”

“No!” Andy said.  “There are too many of them.”

Scott put his hand on his M4, but Andy went on shaking his head.  “The others outside will hear the shots, and come running before we can do anything.  We won’t have time.”

Mikey was looking back and forth between them impatiently, unable to follow the Spanish. 

“That thing’s gotta go off,” Scott insisted.  “They could find it any moment.”

“I’ve got the phone!” Andy dived into his pocket, and pulled out the little Nokia.  “I couldn’t call it before, they were all watching me!”

“Shit, he’s got the phone!” Michael said, in English. 

“Call it!” Scott said to Andy. 

“Are you _crazy?_ ” Andy squawked at him, closing his hand around the phone and snatching it back against his chest protectively.   

“Don’t ring it now!” Mikey barked at Andy in English.  “Let’s get the hell out of here first!” 

“They’ll be coming in here any second!" Scott insisted.

"Oy, shut up, you don't know how to count anyway! Andy, don't ring that thing till we're clear!"

“ _Si!_ We go!” Andy said to Michael, in English.  “You come!” he snapped at Scott.

“Ah, fuck!” Scott said.  If he tried to grab the phone he’d find himself fighting both Michael _and_ Andy.  “Fine!” 

Andy moved to the door.  “I go first, they know me.”  He pulled the door open, and put his head out.  “All clear,” he reported. 

“We’re behind you,” Michael nodded to Andy.   

Andy pushed the door open and stepped out.  Scott slipped through the door, and Michael followed. 

“Go right,” Scott ordered, over-taking Andy and taking the lead.  He was the one with the assault rifle, he’d have to lead the way.  They couldn’t follow the same route as the rest of the team, because they’d run slap bang into the enemy who were running after Baxter and Dalton.  The decision made itself inside his head – front gate, under their noses, get out while the sentries were all frazzled. 

They ran around to the front corner of the barn, and out into the bright open space of the lawn.  They’d driven over this lawn, just a few thousand years ago.  “Don’t sprint,” Scott ordered.  “Nice and slow.” 

They ran upright, keeping to a purposeful jog.  They could make it if they didn’t attract attention, and Scott could feel eyes on the back of his head.  “Go,” he hissed, in time with his jog.  “Go … go… go…go…” 

Fifty yards to the tree line … forty yards to the tree line … thirty yards… Scott ticked it off in his head.

The sound of alarmed voices burst out.  Scott looked over his shoulder to see men spilling out of the big hangar door of the barn, sprinting in all directions and all shouting at once.  “It’s a bomb!” 

“There’s a bomb in the van!” 

“It’s a bomb _, run like_ _hell!_ ”  

“Shit!” Michael barked.  

Scott threw himself to a halt.  “Andy, ring it!” 

“No!” Michael roared.  “We’re too close!”  He lunged at Scott, ignoring his M4.  Iron fingers grabbed Scott by the arm and began dragging him into a run. 

“If we wait any longer they’ll cut the fuse!”  Andy yelled behind Scott.  “Ahh-h-h, _merda!_ ” 

“ _Fucking well run you stupid twat!_ ”  Michael roared into Scott’s ear.  He didn’t stop, didn’t let go, and he was too strong to be denied.  Scott was dragged off balance and manhandled into a run, towed along whether he liked it or not. 

“Let me go!”  Scott thrashed around, trying to free himself, but he was being yanked off-balance and off-pace by Michael’s huge strength.  He managed to throw a look behind him. 

Andy Correia was twenty yards behind him, standing perfectly still as if he was waiting for something.  His head was bowed over the phone in his palm, his brows quirked up, and his thumb was moving over the keypad.  For a moment, a single clear moment, Scott saw his eyes reflect the glow of the phone’s little blue screen. 

Scott opened his mouth to shout his name, but the sound never came out. 

For a moment the night became the sun. 

Narsil would have been vaporised instantly.  Hot metal fragments sliced into the sides of the missiles, opening them to the air, and the fuel inside all four Okas erupted as one.  Solid rocket fuel, intended to burn steadily from the tail of the missile; nearly four tons of fuel in each missile; enough power to drive a missile for hundreds of miles, and now _all_ that power was unleashed in a single heartbeat. 

The pressure wave slammed into Scott, picked him up and threw him off his feet.  He felt himself being smashed into the ground, tumbling like a rag, and the heat blazed at him as if a furnace was being thrown after him.  All the air was sucked out of his body. His body rolled helplessly, blind and deaf.

He opened his eyes.  His chest heaved to suck air back into his lungs.  His ears rang shrilly, and he curled himself up and wrapped both hands around his head.  The earth in front of his nose was lit by flickering fire.  How long had he been unconscious? 

His chest hurt; breathing hurt.  _Everything_ fucking hurt.  … _Fuck me…_ he shouted.  He felt his voice in his throat but heard no sound.  _… Jesus Christ! Michael?..._   

The explosion had been just this side of killing him from concussion alone.  _Just_ this side; but he had survived.  He uncurled his arms and looked around him, and then pushed himself up onto his elbows.  Michael had been thrown off his feet too.  He was a few yards away, pushing himself up onto his elbows and shaking his head as if he was dazed. 

… _Fuck me_ … Scott said, experimentally, and was relieved to find that he could still hear the distant sound of himself over the scream of tinnitus.  There was no sound of gunfire, as if both sides of the fight had been stunned into immobility by the explosion. 

Scott pushed himself up to his hands and knees, and turned to look at the wreckage of the barn.  It was a ruin, flames still spurting up through the smoke.  Its walls had disappeared, shredded away by the blast.  The men who had been pouring out of the doors were simply _gone_ , blown to shreds.

The bright floodlights were no more, and the lawn was black.  On the ground between him and the barn, something was moving.  It moved again, more strongly than a rag drifting in backdraft should. 

“Shit,” Scott grunted, and forced himself to his feet.  He ran over to Andy. 

Andy lay on his back.  His body was the beginning point of a black trail, which ended metres away with a large lump of corrugated steel.  He grasped at his stomach, and as Scott reached him his eyes opened, and then his mouth. 

“Ahh haaa _haaa,_ _Madre de Dios_ …”   

“Andy!” Scott dropped to his knees by his side.  “Andy, shit…” 

He was kneeling in a pool of Andy’s blood, and the smell struck his nose.  He flinched from the smell.  He had smelled that stench before, and as he remembered it he knew what the trail of gore between Andy and the shrapnel _meant_.  The chunk of flying steel had struck the Brazilian in the back, and whipped through his gut. 

Andy was panting with pain; pain that was growing as his brain realized there was something very, _very_ wrong with him.  His hands grasped at the sticky bloody mess in his middle. 

“Fuck, Andy, fuck.”  Scott couldn’t just _look._   He bent low and gripped Andy’s hands.

“Haaaaaa _aaaaahhhh_ …”

Michael arrived.  “Shit,” Michael said.  “We need to stop the bleeding.” He pulled out a packet of gauze from a pocket – a field dressing.  “You keep the pressure, I’ll start to… um…” and to Scott’s amazement he started trying to scoop up the fallen bits of Andy with the clear intention of stuffing them back inside. 

“Michael, stop.”  Scott pulled out his morphine syringe.  He leaned over Andy’s face, tight and terrified, and stuck the needle into his trapezius muscle. 

“We can tie it off for medevac!” Michael said. 

“Michael, there _is_ no medevac!”  They would never get him to a doctor in time; and even if they could, there was no hope of fixing intestines punched full of holes and mixed with gravel; the infections and massive organ failure would kill him anyway.  And even if they could, even if they could keep him _alive_ , that was no life for Randy Andy Correia, to live with his back broken and almost all his lower digestive tract gone.  It would be a hard and painful battle, for a war already lost.  “We’ll never get him to a hospital in time!”

Andy dug at the ground with the back of his head, arching himself, his hands grasping.  _“Aargh!”_

“Andy!”  Scott doubled his grip on Andy’s hands, so that Andy had something to clench his fists while the morphine took hold. 

 “I’ll keep the pressure on anyway,” Michael said, mulishly.  He pulled out all of his field bandages, and rifled Scott’s pockets for his, and bundled them up against Andy’s chest. 

Scott sat still, feeling Michael tug at his pockets and pouches for his field dressings, and watched Andy’s face.  The morphine was working.  Scott saw the understanding coming back into Andy’s eyes.  His mouth gulped at the air.  He said something in Portuguese, and then changed to Spanish. 

“Am I better?” he asked, puzzled. 

“No.  That’s the morphine talking,” Scott told him.  He leaned down and put his hands on either side of Andy’s head, looking straight down into his face.  “Fuck, Andy, you were supposed to jump out and run away…”

“Did I get him?” 

“Yeah, you got him.”  Scott slipped his hand under Andy’s head, pillowing the back of his neck in his palm. 

“Good.”  Andy’s eyes went distracted, and Scott thought he was passing out, but he was moving his arms over his body, pressing his hands to his injuries, and he winced.  “I am dying!” he observed, with some surprise.  “I am shot all the way through.  I can feel it!” 

“Yeah, I think you are.”  Scott tightened his hold on Andy’s neck.  So much of his life he shared with Andy, and now Andy was slipping away.  “Fuck.  I’m sorry.” 

Andy lifted his eyebrows.  “I have always wanted to know what it felt like to be a soldier.”  He sighed, as if he was suddenly tired.  The pool of blood around Scott’s knees was growing. 

“You’re a soldier now, Andy,” Scott said.  He shifted one of his hands to grasp Andy’s.  “It’s how you finish that counts.”

“I am dying a soldier’s death… Ah, well,” Andy said.  The morphine was making him sanguine, even as he exsanguinated on the grass.  “That’s life.”

“You won, Andy.”

“Kill for money.  Kill for pride.  Fine.”  Andy sighed, and shifted back to Portuguese.  “ _Para matar milhões de pessoas,_ for an idea? … Such a fleeting thing...  No.  Wrong, wrong.” He was growing tired, as shock and blood loss took their toll.  “Too many, for not enough.  But I stop him.  I stop him, _si?_ ”  

He couldn’t see the wreck of the barn, Scott realized; he didn’t know for sure that the missiles were gone.   “You stopped him,” Scott said. 

“Good.”  Andy sighed again.  His face was beginning to grow very pale, a fishy grey under his Mediterranean complexion, and Scott could feel him start to shiver.  He was bleeding too fast; slipping into shock.  “I wish I could finish with a priest.” 

Scott squeezed his eyes shut.  He couldn’t remember anything of the Last Rites from his catechism lessons, other than the fact that as an extremely lapsed Catholic layman, he couldn’t give them himself.  And he couldn’t remember a single line of the prayer he _was_ supposed to give under the circumstances. 

“Yeah… I think God is used to soldiers,” he said, hesitantly.  “He can find his own.” 

“ _Si,_ ” said Andy.  “God is used to soldiers.”  He sighed again, the breath followed by a long shudder.   

“You did _good_ , Andy,” Scott said.  “You don’t have anything to worry about.  You did _good_.” 

Andy said something else, but he spoke in Portuguese.  His voice had gone very low, rising and falling just under Scott’s hearing. Scott thought he was making confession, or praying. 

He was going, whether Scott believed in his God or not.  He had a right to go into the endless dark in the way he wanted, if it made the going easier.  Scott gripped his hand. 

“Hail Mary, full of grace…”  The words spooled out of his memory, from a long-ago Mass, once heard, never forgotten.  He spoke for Andy’s benefit, and in Spanish so that Michael, sitting on his heels a few feet away, couldn’t understand. 

By the time he got to _'Pray for us sinners,'_ he was talking to himself.  He stopped.  Andy’s eyes were closed. 

“Fuck, Andy,” he said to the closed eyes.  “You weren’t supposed to stay.  You were supposed to bail out.”

He felt something touch his shoulder, and squeeze.  Michael’s hand, pressing his shoulder. 

Not a hug, but a caress of sorts.  He raised his hand, and closed it over the hand on his shoulder; commiseration, and gratitude. 

“It’s how you finish that counts,” Michael said. 

“Yeah,” Scott rubbed his eyes, and realized that the wetness down his face was his tears, not blood or sweat.  He wiped his eyes with the backs of his palms. 

“Come on,” Michael said.  He squeezed Scott’s shoulder.  “D’ye want to take him with us?” 

Lug a corpse all the way out of here?  Andy wouldn’t know the difference.  “No time.  They’ll get their act together, and we’ve gotta go.”   He put Andy’s hand down at his side.  He gave Andy one last look to fix his face in his memory, knowing he’d never see him again, and climbed to his feet. 

His clothes were torn, by the force of the explosion.  He turned, and had another look at the barn. 

The flames were dying out, having sucked up all their fuel in one enormous paroxysm.  The shredded ruin was black, and the smoke that hung in the air smelled greasy.  There was fallen shrapnel and bits of wreckage all over the ground.  Narsil was gone; gone with all four Okas and the mortal remains of Toufeeq al-Tanzir. 

There was something missing, and it took him a moment to realize what it was.  There were no sirens.  Every other bomb he’d planted was immediately echoed by the scream of frantic sirens and car alarms.  There were no sirens out here.  This one was different.     

He pushed himself forward into a walk, aware of Michael walking parallel to him.  There didn’t seem to be any sound of gunfire.  In the distance, he could see figures wandering around, as if lost.  The survivors seemed too stunned to carry on fighting, but soon enough they would get their act together, and come looking for vengeance on Section Twenty.

He walked across the grass, detouring around a group of men who were dazedly wandering towards the barn and saying, _“Non, oh non, oh non,”_ in tones of consternation.  Their eyes were on the barn, and he detoured away from them and steered towards the trees.     

Some of the trees had caught fire from the explosion.  He walked under streams of flying ash.  Under one of the trees, he saw a figure, sitting under a tree.  He recognised the white shirt, hugged under the black body armour, and the thick snake of her braid down her back.  He sped up into a jog. 

Richmond was sitting on the ground, curled around a bent knee, and swearing in a tight hiss. 

“Julia,” he said.  “What happened to you?”

She looked up at him, and he could see the recognition and confusion in her eyes.  He wondered if he looked as dazed as she did.  “I fell out of a tree,” she said.  “My ankle’s sprained.” 

“What were you doing in a _tree?_ ”

“Shooting people!” she said, as if it was dumb question.  “How do you _think_ you got back in there?”

“Let Mikey carry you, we gotta find the others and get out of here before they get their asses into gear.” 

She let Michael put his arms around her and lift her.  She leaned on him, and they limped together as if they were in a three-legged race.  Scott walked on, letting them follow, in the direction he had last seen Baxter and Dalton. 

The enemy was getting their act together.  He saw a group of them standing over there by a nissen hut, lit up by the glow from the barn.  Arms were being waved, and he saw a walkie talkie changing hands.  Scott saw a head of golden hair, and he heard the hiss as Michael recognised him too. 

“Pavel Arnisimov,” Richmond said. 

Blood was blotched across the side of Arnisimov’s face.  “Let’s go get him,” Michael said. 

“No,” Scott decided. 

“You saw what that bastard did at Taljaard,”  Michael insisted. 

“No,” Scott said.  The battle was over, but Section Twenty was still outnumbered seventy against five.  _Ira est mortem_ ; they wouldn’t avenge Taljaard’s dead by getting themselves shot.  “No.  Our fight is with his boss.  Leave him.  He’s fucked.” 

Three times Section Twenty had gone head-to-head with Arnisimov, and three times they had walked away.  And the missiles were gone.  The whole reason for Camp B’s existence was over, Toufeeq had failed in his mission, and Knox would not look with kindness on his surviving second-in-command. 

Arnisimov was a killer, but for now he was fucked.  They might face each other again in the future, but here and now, Arnisimov was finished in South Africa. 

Even as Scott watched, more Camp B men joined Arnisimov’s little group, and Arnisimov began to give orders, pointing with the walkie-talkie’s aerial.  “We’re done here.  We did what we came to do.  Let’s go home.”   

They had come in the night; they had done what they had set themselves to do; now they would disappear, and fade into the night like shadows.  They were the elite of the elite of the elite, and they didn’t exist.  The job was done, and it was time to go. 

He led them away through the trees. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a habit of writing the end of stories before I write the middle, and I wrote a particular scene in this chapter many months ago. If you have seen Season 4, you can probably guess which one. Watching it happen right in front of my eyes was an absolutely freaky feeling. I did think long and hard about changing it, but in the end I decided to leave it in, with very few changes, because it just ... _fitted._


	4. Chapter 4

## Thursday morning

“We’re packing up and moving back to Cape Town,” Dalton said. “According to Correia, Knox practiced very strict compartmentalisation; no-one at Camp B knew where Camp A is.  But Correia _was_ able to tell us that the hardware is with Knox, somewhere to the south.”

Colonel Hodge nodded, the video connection making the gesture catch in a blur of pixels.  “General Bennett sends his congratulations,” she said.  “Taking Toufeeq al-Tanzir is a scalp for MI6.  It should go a long way to making friends for us in Libya.  One less headache for the reconstruction to deal with.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dalton agreed.  “However, the nukes – and Knox – are still out there.  We’ve taken away his long-range capability, but he still has weapons of mass destruction.  We want to follow the Zimbabwean truck-driver connection.  We believe Knox to be talking to elements in the Zimbabwean opposition.”

“You have General Bennett’s go-ahead to follow your leads where-ever they take you.”

Dalton managed not to blurt her surprise, but Hodge must have seen the expression on her face.  “Whitehall has had a very interesting chat with a very senior South African government official,” Hodge said.  “Threatening all sorts of inconveniences for our African trade, if we don’t recall Section Twenty immediately.”

“Joseph Dreyer?”

“I’m not at liberty to confirm that.  What I _can_ confirm is that MI6 is not in the habit of yielding to threats from greasy little Third World crooks.  _Particularly_ not when the behaviour of the greasy little crook corroborates your threat assessment.”

“He wouldn’t have snarled if he wasn’t spooked,” Dalton interpreted. 

“Precisely.  We do not like threats.”

Dalton did not like to ask questions, but she had to know.  “My support staff are all in London,” she hinted.  “I have local assistance from Ava Knox, but as far as manpower goes, I could use the full team.”

“Your team is still out in the cold,” Hodge said.  “We cannot sanction a military operation without cast-iron proof.”

“Proof will be forthcoming.”

“ _Then,_ and only then, warm blankets will be sent.  Am I making myself perfectly clear?”

“Clear as crystal, ma’am.”  She could do what she needed to do, as long as her actions were clandestine.  Whitehall was behind her, as long as the connection to Whitehall was concealed.  As soon as Conrad Knox came out of cover, London would do the same.  Section Twenty was back in the fold. 

Dalton bared her teeth in a victorious grin as she cut the connection.  Getting command of the unit had been a coup; keeping it was a bigger one; she could _do_ this.

 

* * *

 

Scott watched Maggie pack her camera into her shoulder bag, and do up the bag’s clasps.  That camera was always the last thing to be packed, always the first to come out, and _always_ within easy grabbing range.  She stood up, swinging the bag on its long strap so that it seemed to flow onto her shoulder, and gave the hidden camera a pat. 

“You’re good to go?” Scott asked, following her out of the farmhouse.

“Yeah, I’ve got everything.” 

“And you know the drill?  You don’t publish squat until the story breaks.  And you cover all faces in the pictures.” 

“Sweetie, didn’t I do that with the Khartoum story?”  She stood on tiptoe to press a kiss on his cheek.  “Trust me.  With this much lead time, I’ll write up a story so good, it’ll make the front covers of Time, the Week and the Spectator on the _same day_.  Conrad Knox will wet himself when he sees it.” 

“Yeah.”  He watched her hitch her shoulder bag up onto her collar, and walk away across the yard.  “Stay safe!” he called after her. 

She turned, retreating backwards, and treated him to a Parthian grin.  “Hey!” she yelled back to him, throwing both arms into the air exultantly.  “ _I_ survived a love triangle with Special Forces!  _I_ can survive _anything!_ ”

He watched the car back up and do a three-point in the yard, and a moment later she was gone in a cloud of dust. 

Section Twenty would follow, soon.  Andy had said that Camp A and the nukes were somewhere to the south, much closer to Cape Town.  They were going to take the Crib apart, and drive back there.  He could hear Baxter and Richmond behind the farmhouse, taking down the camouflage netting.  For once, they would be going back with more equipment than they had come out: they were taking the old Volkswagen and Ava Knox's little luggage trailer with them.

Knox’s missiles were gone, blown up.  The satellite images this morning showed the bombed-out barn.  The farm was deserted, all the men and weapons evacuated.  Knox still had his nuclear weapons, but he would not be able to send them through the sky.  Andy Correia had paid for that victory with his life; sacrificing himself to stop a bomb that even _he_ thought was just too big. 

Scott had worried that the universe was sending a message, and it was.  Scott, and Andy, and Christy, all in the same place at the same time, but the omen wasn’t for him.  It was Andy who’d come to Cape Town to change his stars, not Scott.  It was Andy who had found his redemption with his death. 

No-one had drunk a toast to Andy’s memory last night.  Andy was a stranger to the rest of Section Twenty, and a murderer.  They would not miss him, but Scott was a murderer too.  He didn’t have the luxury of moral complications.  He didn’t have the luxury of _morals_ , period.  He would mourn Andy, silently, in his own way. 

He became aware of a presence at his back, and turned.  Michael had arrived.  He was leaning against the front wall of the farmhouse, doing the Super-sized Slender Man impression. 

“Yo,” Scott said, shaking off his glomp-swamps.  He would mourn, but not where they could see it.   He turned and walked across the yard toward the house, and climbed up onto the porch into the shade.

“She’s gone, then,” Michael said. 

“Thank you, Captain Obvious.” 

Michael didn’t shift away as he walked up, and he didn’t look straight through Scott’s gaze.  That was good.  It was an improvement on yesterday. 

“How long until you see her again?”  Michael asked. 

Scott shrugged his shoulders, dismissing the question.  He didn’t know, and it wasn’t important.  “It’s just you and me now, buddy.” 

That brought a slight smile from Michael, but he shook his head.  The sunlight was crisp in his clear eyes.  “I don’t think so.”

“You sure?  Sure-sure?” 

“Kerry had a saying," Michael said. " 'Never make someone your everything, if all you are to them is an option.' ” 

Scott knew a _No_ when he heard one.  “Ho- _kay_ ,” he said. 

Mikey folded his arms, and ostentatiously braced his shoulders.  He stared out at the wind pump as if he’d never seen it before.  Scott recognised the signs of Stonehenge grinding an idea slowly and deeply into a Thought. 

 Scott could wait for the little millstones in Mikey's head to do their thing.  Whatever Mikey was thinking, whatever decisions he was making, Scott would find out about it in the fullness of time.  _Que sera, sera…_

Scott leaned against the pillar, and took out his cigarettes.  

Mikey broke the silence, after a few minutes.  “I _am_ grateful, by the way,” he said.  He lifted his jaw toward the horizon in that little tic of his. 

“Yeah?” Scott pulled his mind back into the moment. 

“I’d still be in the closet, if it weren’t for you. You showed me the way out.” 

 _That_ was a sudden change of subject.  “Uh, yeah.  Sorry.” 

“Don’t be a twat.”  Michael turned to face him.  His voice was very level.  “It’s always _been_ a thing. But I would still be in denial about who I am, if not for you. I owe you for that.”

“And now?”

“And now… I keep going.  I can’t _not_ keep going.”

He had that right, Scott thought.  He’d come out in front of the whole unit.  Unless soldiers magically stopped gossiping,  the whole SAS and SBS would know about it in a matter of weeks.  Michael Stonebridge had just joined the gay rights movement, whether the gay rights movement liked it or not.  Scott could already see him rolling into the local office of the Pink Triangle Project like Patton rolling into Paris.  

"And I’m going to go and tell my father as soon as we go home.”  

“You…whuh?”  He opened and closed his mouth a few times before he could come up with a coherent reply.  “Are you _sure?_ ”

“Of course I’m sure,” Michael said.  “I am what I am.” 

“I meant about your old man!” Scott said.  “He’s a fuckin’ Perisher, for fuck’s sake.  What’s he gonna say?”

“He won’t be thrilled, obviously.  But he’ll come around eventually.”

"Huh." 

Scott remembered the look in the Captain’s eyes when the old man had asked for his help.  Michael and his father were ‘not as intimate as that.’ Maybe _this_ was part of the invisible emotional crevasse between them.  Maybe getting _this_ out of the way would go some way to bridging the gap.  Maybe having _this_ conversation would help them both. 

The one thing Scott _knew_ was that the Captain had only one son, and in spite of the stiff upper lip he loved his son with all his pickled Navy heart. 

“Yeah,” he said, slowly.  “He’ll get over it.” 

“He’ll have to,” Michael said.  There was a solid set to his jaw that Scott knew.  “I’ve never backed down from a confrontation before, and I’m not about to start now.  Not with this.” 

“Fuck me.”  Scott rubbed his beard.  “You don’t do things by halves, do you?” he said. 

“Labels are important, Scott.”  Michael looked at him, his eyes narrow and his eyebrows raised, as if Scott was the one who was being obtuse.  “This label is _mine_.”

“Well, speaking of labels, they do say the finest traditions of the Royal Navy are rum, sodomy, and the lash.  Tell your old man _that_ , and see what he says.”  

“We never _did_ get around to sodomy,” Michael pointed out.  

“That ship hasn’t sailed yet,” Scott reminded him. 

“Oh, yes, it has.  Weighed and sailed and hull-down.” 

Scott narrowed his eyes quizzically.  “You _know_ you want to.”

“It’s not a question of _wanting_ to.  I will always _want_ to.  But the answer is still no."   

“Then what?”

“Answer me one question, Scott.  Give me the truth, straight up.”

“Yeah?”

“How far ahead were you thinking?"

"Ahead?"

"Was this a fling?  Or were you thinking marriage?”

“ _Marriage?_ ”  

“Huh.”  Michael smiled; a little sourly.  

“I wasn’t thinking _marriage!_   _Nobody_ thinks marriage after just a few days!”

“ _I_ do!” 

He probably was, too: this was a guy who'd got married straight out of high school, literally  between graduating and enlisting. 

“It’s _way_ too soon to be making _that_ sort of plan!” 

“And _there’_ s why we aren’t doing sex again.  You and I think on different time scales."  

“You saying I only think _short_ -term?” 

“I _know_ you do.  You live in the _now_.  You _feel_ too much.”

Michael was looking at him closely, without anger.  It had always been easy to talk to Michael; it had always been easy to share with Michael, and now that the barrier of sex had disappeared, the truth slipped out easily.

“I was thinking a few weeks,” he admitted.  “A month, max.”

Michael grunted, and then straightened his spine. 

“But there’s the thing.  I don’t _want_ to have a few weeks and then lose you.  Like _that_ ,” Michael nodded in the direction that Maggie had driven away.   “If we go on doing sex, we’ll make each other miserable.  I’ll get frustrated, and you’ll choke, and I'll lose you."

"I'm sorry," Scott said.  "I never meant to hurt you.  I do love you, you know."

"I know.  And I love you.  But I know you can't give me what I want." 

"Sorry." 

"But I won't give you up.  I want you in my life, for the rest of my life.  Not as my lover, but as my _brother_ _."_

 _“Brothers?”_  

 “Right now, I have a bird in my hand,” Michael knotted one fist.  He raised the hand in the air, and let his fingers fly up, as if he was releasing a dove into the air. 

"I can't keep you as a lover even if I tried.  You just _can't_ give me that.  You don't have it in you to give.  I can't keep you as a lover.  But I can keep you as a brother.  If you'll let me."  

Scott watched Michael’s fingers as he made that letting-go gesture.  

"Brothers?" he said. 

“Brothers are for keeps," Michael said.  "Brothers are _for ever._ I want you in my life for ever.  I want you with me when we're both old and grey and walking on Zimmer frames."  

"I love you," Scott said.  "You don't know how much."  

"And I love you.  I will always love you.  Come home with me, Scott?  Come home with me, and be my brother?"     

_Brothers?  A home?_

He hadn't had a home in years. 

Michael’s fist was clenched close to his heart. Scott found himself staring at that fist. That fist was _himself,_ he knew, held tightly to Michael's heart. 

Michael loved him.  Michael _understood_ him.   Michael knew his lonely soul better than any man. 

He was so _tired_ of being an exile, a refugee, a wandering star.  He had wanted a dog?  Fuck that.  He _was_ a dog.  He was a starving stray, and Mikey was offering the stray a forever-home. 

And he could have it, if he wanted it.  All Scott had to do was accept it.  

Michael was still looking at him, waiting.  “I _know_ you want to,” Michael said. 

Scott had been holding his breath.  He let it out with a whoosh.

“Brothers,” he grinned.  He didn’t know how to express his pleasure without sounding mushy, but tears were rising in his eyes. 

"You sure?"

"Yes! I'm sure!  Brothers!"    

“Brothers," said Michael.  He reached out his hand.  

They shook hands on _brothers_ as if it was a vow. 

It was a vow, Scott realized.  They had agreed to watch each other's backs after the Royal Lotus Hotel.  That had been a verbal agreement too, but it had never been broken, not once.  That agreement had turned out to be tighter than the North Atlantic Treaty.  Michael had flown all the way to Mogadishu on a moment’s notice, based on _that_ agreement. 

This was a vow, Scott realized, and it was a vow he was happy to make.  He would be this man's brother, now and for as long as they both lived.  He loved Michael with all his heart.  

Suddenly, shaking hands wasn't enough.  A handshake did not meet the intensity of the emotions inside him. 

He'd grown familiar with Michael's body over the last few days, and the shape of him was familiar.  He stepped into Michael's space, and put his arms around Michael. Hard arms went around Scott's back and squeezed  tightly.  He could feel the warmth and strength of Michael against him, and around him. 

They had held each other this way in Carpenter's Guesthouse, but this was different.  He realized that he was crying. 

Michael breathed deeply against him, and Scott relaxed. They were almost exactly the same height, and his jaw came to rest on Mikey's shoulder. A moment later he felt Michael's hand come up behind him, and brush the hair on the back of his head very lightly. 

He felt a sob break out of him, and was surprised at how heavy it sounded. He felt as if a muscle that had been knotted all week had suddenly come undone. In a second, he would be blubbering all over Michael's shirt. 

"Okay, that's enough," Mikey announced, and he shoved Scott away.  "Anything else and you'll start giving me a hard-on." 

 Scott let himself be fended away, breaking contact and stepping back.  

Michael turned, and set his back against the wall.  

Scott leaned against the wall alongside him, happy.  He lit another cigarette from the stub of the first, and tried not to cry into his Zippo. 

For a moment, neither of them said anything. 

“I’ve reconsidered what I said about the Last of the Spartans,” Michael said.

“Okay?”

“We’re not lovers, are we?  No, we’re warriors who have passed _through_ a phase of being lovers.  So, we’re not the last of the Spartans.  We’re the last of the _Samurai_ …”

 “Uh, yeah, okay…”  He was getting another history lesson. Where did Mikey get all this stuff? 

“Shudō,” Michael said.  “It was part of the iniation into the Samurai code… The Samurai code was built around personal relationships and ties between men... Older warriors – that’s _you_ , mate – took younger guys - that's _me_ \- and taught them all about the ways of the world, military skills and honour and beauty and all that.  Including sex … and even if you argue about the _prevalence_ you can’t really deny that it was a cultural Thing… And of course, the bonds of Shudō lasted for life, as close as family. Warriors bound by Shudō were tied together for life...” 

“Oh, God.  I’m stuck listening to this _forever,_ aren't I?”

“Yes,” Michael announced, happily.  “Yes, you are … for the rest of your life.  Let me tell you about the Edo period, shall I...?”

 

* * *

 

## Epilogue

Conrad Knox put down the photographs of Camp B.  The barn where the missiles had been was a blackened wreck.  Bare bones stuck up where the scaffolding had stood.

Matlock stood and looked down at his boss.  He knew what the photographs contained: he’d printed them out himself.

Section Twenty had managed to find Camp B - but _how_ they had found it, Matlock did not know.  They had slipped a bomb into a heavily guarded base - but _how,_ Matlock did not know.  They had blown up the missiles that Knox had spent so much time and money acquiring, and then they had disappeared like ghosts - and once again, Matlock did not know _how._  

Knox narrowed his eyes, and gritted his teeth.  “Where is Arnisimov?  It was his job to guard this location.  This is _his_ failure.” 

“Took off as soon as the dust settled,” Matlock grated.  

“This has been a shambles.  An expensive shambles, hmm?  If you find him, I want a word.”

Matlock could imagine Knox wanted _lots_ of words with Arnisimov.  But Knox's lizard-blue eyes betrayed nothing.  There was no emotion of any kind there, not even anger. 

“I’ll deal with it,” a voice spoke up from the corner.  Craig Hanson was there, sitting listening and cleaning a handgun.  His eyes slid up to meet Matlock’s, and his lips twisted up into a knowing smirk. 

Matlock turned away from the smirk, refusing to let Hanson nettle him.  He looked back at the table.  Among the photographs was a large print-out of Section Twenty’s two best fighters.  Even upside down, he could see their faces: the clean-shaven thoroughbred, and the scruffy terrier.  

“This is Section Twenty’s doing,” Matlock said.

“Toufeeq should have dealt with them,” Knox said.  “Clearly my faith in him was misplaced."

"Section Twenty is better than we expected."

"Dreyer will deal with them.  A word in the right ears on the right subject, and Whitehall will have no choice but to withdraw them.” 

“Perhaps we need to reconsider,” Matlock hinted.  It was the closest he could bring himself to telling his employer he was a lunatic, and doomed to fail. 

"Reconsider?" 

“We’re falling prey to mission creep here.  We don’t have the missiles any more.” 

“We may have lost the missiles,” Knox said, “But that is no hindrance to our plans.  We will go on.  We just need to rethink the parameters of our strategy.”

“How will we deliver the warhead without a missile?” Matlock rasped.

Conrad Knox picked up his brandy snifter and swirled the brandy in it.  “Little Boy was dropped from an aircraft,” he said.  “We don’t _need_ a missile.  All we need is a box, and a truck to put it in…”

“Ka-boom,” Hanson added, smirking. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to everyone who commented. Thanks especially to Feowyn, for her beta-reading and a much-needed morale-boost at a crucial time. 
> 
> Also, apologies to everyone who was expecting Scott and Stonebridge to ride off into the sunset hand-in-hand. I had to write the story that was in me to write. Scott has always seemed to me to have a certain pathos.
> 
> This was the longest and most complex thing I've ever written, and quite a lot of reading went into it. Most of my fact-checking was done online, and on four websites in particular: Wikipedia; Google Street View; the Internet Movie Firearms Database; and the British Army Rumour Service. The idea for Narsil came from a Jeremy Clarkson documentary about the St Nazaire raid. A lot of other inspiration came from books, especially Richard Holmes’ _Acts of War,_ Bob Shepherd’s _The Circuit,_ Matt Potter’s _Outlaws Inc._ ~~Andy McNabb’s~~ That Other SAS Author’s _Seven Troop,_ (as a story about the SAS it’s a fine story about mental illness), and lastly a whole _lot_ of travel guides about the Northern Cape.
> 
> Most of the named places in this story are real. Kalk Bay harbour is real, and you've seen it if you’ve seen Project Dawn. Kalk Bay's little fish-market stands in for Maputo.


End file.
